Page:My Bondage and My Freedom (1855).djvu/215

 

CHAPTER XV.

COVEY, THE NEGRO BREAKER.

JOURNEY TO MY NEW MASTER'S—MEDITATIONS BY THE WAY—VIEW OF COVEY'S RESIDENCE—THE FAMILY—THE AUTHOR'S AWKWARDNESS AS A FIELD HAND—A CRUEL BEATING—WHY IT WAS GIVEN—DESCRIPTION OF COVEY—FIRST ADVENTURE AT OX DRIVING—HAIR BREADTH ESCAPES—OX AND MAN ALIKE PROPERTY—COVEY'S MANNER OF PROCEEDING TO WHIP—HARD LABOR BETTER THAN THE WHIP FOR BREAKING DOWN THE SPIRIT—CUNNING AND TRICKERY OF COVEY—FAMILY WORSHIP—SHOCKING CONTEMPT FOR CHASTITY—THE AUTHOR BROKEN DOWN—GREAT MENTAL AGITATION IN CONTRASTING THE FREEDOM OF THE SHIPS WITH HIS OWN SLAVERY—ANGUISH BEYOND DESCRIPTION.

The morning of the first of January, 1834, with its chilling wind and pinching frost, quite in harmony with the winter in my own mind, found me, with my little bundle of clothing on the end of a stick, swung across my shoulder, on the main road, bending my way toward Covey's, whither I had been imperiously ordered by Master Thomas. The latter had been as good as his word, and had committed me, without reserve, to the mastery of Mr. Edward Covey. Eight or ten years had now passed since I had been taken from my grandmother's cabin, in Tuckahoe; and these years, for the most part, I had spent in Baltimore, where—as the reader has already seen—I was treated with comparative tenderness. I was now about to sound profounder depths in slave life. The