e bars, I drove into the field, and passing over a
ridge that hid it from the road, I stopped in front of a log cabin
that had every appearance of being an abandoned and neglected
homestead. That was the station I was looking for. Arousing my
sleeping passengers, I saw them enter the old domicile, where I
bade them good-by, and received the tearful and repeated thanks of
the youthful slave mother, speaking for herself and her offspring.
I never saw them again, but in due time the news came back, over
what was jocularly called the 'grape-vine telegraph,' that they
had safely reached their destination.

"At the home of the station agent I was enthusiastically received.
That a boy of eleven should accomplish what I had done was thought
to be quite wonderful. I was given an excellent breakfast, and
then shown to a room with a bed, where I had a good sleep. On my
awakening I set out on the return journey, this time taking the
most direct route, as I had then no fear of that hireling
constable.

"Subsequently I passed through several experiences of a similar
kind, some of them involving greater risks and more exciting
incidents, but the recollection of none of them brings me greater
satisfaction than the memory of my first conductorship on the
Underground.

"All of which is respectfully submitted by

"JOHN SMITH."

CHAPTER XVII

COLONIZATION

I have had a good deal to say about Anti-Slavery societies. There was
another society which was called into existence by the slavery
situation. Whether it was pro-slavery or anti-slavery was a question
that long puzzled a good many people. It was the Colonization Society.
A good many Anti-Slavery people believed in it for a time and gave it
their support. "I am opposed to slavery, but I am not an Abolitionist:
I am a Colonizationist," was a declaration that, when I was a boy, I
heard many and many times, and from the lips of well-intending people.

It did not take the sharp-sighted leaders of the Abolition movement
very long to discover that one of the uses its managers expected to
make of the Colonization Society was as a shield for slavery. It kept
a number of excellent people from joining in an aggressive movement
against it, took their money, and made them believe that they were at
work for the freedom of the negro.

Strangely as it might appear, the negroes, who were assumed to be the
beneficiaries of the colonizatio