The emotions of that moment I cannot fully depict.

Hope, fear, dread, terror, love, sorrow, and deep melancholy were mingled in my mind together; my mental state was one of most painful distraction.

When I looked at my numerous family--a beloved father and mother, eleven brothers and sisters, &c.; but when I looked at slavery as such; when I looked at it in its mildest form, with all its annoyances; and above all, when I remembered that one of the chief annoyances of slavery, in the most mild form, is the liability of being at any moment sold into the worst form; it seemed that no consideration, not even that of life itself, could tempt me to give up the thought of flight.

And then when I considered the difficulties of the way--the reward that would be offered--the human blood-hounds that would be set upon my track--the weariness--the hunger--the gloomy thought, of not only losing all one's friends in one day, but of having to seek and to make new friends in a strange world.
But, as I have said, the hour was come, and the man must act, or for ever be a slave.
It was now two o'clock.

I stepped into the quarter; there was a strange and melancholy silence mingled with the destitution that was apparent in every part of the house.