Just ten years ago this beautiful September morning, yon bright sun beheld me a slave--a poor degraded chattel--trembling at the sound of your voice, lamenting that I was a man, and wishing myself a brute.

The hopes which I had treasured up for weeks of a safe and successful escape from your grasp, were powerfully confronted at this last hour by dark clouds of doubt and fear, making my person shake and my bosom to heave with the heavy contest between hope and fear.

I have no words to describe to you the deep agony of soul which I experienced on that never-to-be-forgotten morning--for I left by daylight.

I was making a leap in the dark.

The probabilities, so far as I could by reason determine them, were stoutly against the undertaking.