During this time, it was necessary to have some one to supply my place at the office, and I lost the situation.
After my recovery, I was hired to Capt.

Otis Reynolds, as a waiter on board the steamboat Enterprize, owned by Messrs.

John and Edward Walsh, commission merchants at St.Louis.This boat was then running on the upper Mississippi.

My employment on board was to wait on gentlemen, and the captain being a good man, the situation was a pleasant one to me;--but in passing from place to place, and seeing new faces every day, and knowing that they could go where they pleased, I soon became unhappy, and several times thought of leaving the boat at some landing place, and trying to make my escape to Canada, which I had heard much about as a place where the slave might live, be free, and be protected.
But whenever such thoughts would come into my mind, my resolution would soon be shaken by the remembrance that my dear mother was a slave in St.
Louis, and I could not bear the idea of leaving her in that condition.
She had often taken me upon her knee, and told me how she had carried me upon her back to the field when I was an infant--how often she had been whipped for leaving her work to nurse me--and how happy I would appear when she would take me into her arms.

When these thoughts came over me, I would resolve never to leave the land of slavery without my mother.