Page:Narrative of Henry Box Brown.pdf/19

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HENRY BOX BROWN.
17

One reason I had for this belief was, that when it was about to thunder, my old master would approach us, if we were in the yard, and say, "All you children run into the house now, for it is going to thunder," and after the shower was over, we would go out again, and he would approach us smilingly, and say, "What a fine shower we have had," and bidding us look at the flowers in the garden, would say, "how pretty the flowers look now." We thought that he thundered, and caused the rain to fall; and not until I was eight years of age, did I get rid of this childish superstition. Our master was uncommonly kind, and as he moved about in his dignity, he seemed like a god to us, and probably he did not dislike our reverential feelings towards him. All the slaves called his son, our Saviour, and the way I was enlightened on this point was as follows. One day after returning from church, my mother told father of a woman who wished to join the church, She told the preacher she had been baptized by one of the slaves, who was called from his office, "John the Baptist;" and on being asked by the minister if she believed "that dur Saviour came into the world, and had died for the sins of man," she replied, that she "knew he had come into the world," but she "had not heard he was dead, as she lived so far from the road, she did not learn much that was going on in the world." I then asked mother, if young master was dead. She said it was not him they were talking about; it was "our Saviour in heaven." I then asked her if there were two Saviours, when she told me that young master was not "our Saviour," which filled me with astonishment, and I could not understand it at first. Not long after this, my sister became anxious to