"Be yourself," said Collins, "and tell your story." It was said to me, "Better have a _little_ of the plantation manner of speech than not; 'tis not best that you seem too learned." These excellent friends were actuated by the best of motives, and were not altogether wrong in their advice; and still I must speak just the word that seemed to _me_ the word to be spoken _by_ me.
At last the apprehended trouble came.

People doubted if I had ever been a slave.

They said I did not talk like a slave, look like a slave, nor act like a slave, and that they believed I had never been south of Mason and Dixon's line.

"He don't tell us where he came from--what his master's name was--how he got away--nor the story of his experience.
Besides, he is educated, and is, in this, a contradiction of all the facts we have concerning the ignorance of the slaves." Thus, I was in a pretty fair way to be denounced as an impostor.

The committee of the Massachusetts anti-slavery society knew all the facts in my case, and agreed with me in the prudence of keeping them private.