ere hungry, no matter
how great the need of my speedy return. Master Thomas at length said he
would stand it no longer. I had lived with him nine months, during
which time he had given me a number of severe whippings, all to no good
purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be broken; and, for
this purpose, he let me for one year to a man named Edward Covey. Mr.
Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the place upon which he
lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it. Mr. Covey had acquired
a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation
was of immense value to him. It enabled him to get his farm tilled with
much less expense to himself than he could have had it done without such
a reputation. Some slaveholders thought it not much loss to allow Mr.
Covey to have their slaves one year, for the sake of the training to
which they were subjected, without any other compensation. He could hire
young help with great ease, in consequence of this reputation. Added
to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of
religion--a pious soul--a member and a class-leader in the
Methodist church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a
"nigger-breaker." I was aware of all the facts, having been made
acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I nevertheless
made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough to eat, which
is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man.

CHAPTER X

I had left Master Thomas's house, and went to live with Mr. Covey, on
the 1st of January, 1833. I was now, for the first time in my life, a
field hand. In my new employment, I found myself even more awkward than
a country boy appeared to be in a large city. I had been at my new home
but one week before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my
back, causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large
as my little finger. The details of this affair are as follows: Mr.
Covey sent me, very early in the morning of one of our coldest days in
the month of January, to the woods, to get a load of wood. He gave me
a team of unbroken oxen. He told me which was the in-hand ox, and which
the off-hand one. He then tied the end of a large rope around the horns
of the in-hand ox, and gave me the other end of it, and told me, if
the oxen started to run, that I must hold on upon the rope. I had
never driven oxen before, and of course I was very awkward. I, h