The day had been an exciting and wearisome one, and I knew not how or where, but I suppose I sobbed myself to sleep.

There is a healing in the angel wing of sleep, even for the slave-boy; and its balm was never more welcome to any wounded soul than it was to mine, the first night I spent at the domicile of old master.

The reader may be surprised that I narrate so minutely an incident apparently so trivial, and which must have occurred when I was not more than seven years old; but as I wish to give a faithful history of my experience in slavery, I cannot withhold a circumstance which, at the time, affected me so deeply.

Besides, this was, in fact, my first introduction to the realities of slavery..