s going to get married the 20th of
November, next. I wish you would write to me how many of my
friends you have seen since October, 1857. Montgomery Green
keeps a barber shop in Cayuga, in the State of New York. I have
not heard of Oscar Ball but once since I came here, and then he
was well and doing well. George Carroll is in Hamilton. The
times are very dull at present, and have been ever since I came
here. Please write soon. Nothing more at present, only I still
remain in Hamilton, C.W.

ISRAEL WHITNEY.

John is nineteen years of age, mulatto, spare made, but not lacking in
courage, mother wit or perseverance. He was born in Fauquier county,
Va., and, after experiencing Slavery for a number of years there--being
sold two or three times to the "highest bidder"--he was finally
purchased by a cotton planter named Hezekiah Thompson, residing at
Huntsville, Alabama. Immediately after the sale Hezekiah bundled his new
"purchase" off to Alabama, where he succeeded in keeping him only about
two years, for at the end of that time John determined to strike a blow
for liberty. The incentive to this step was the inhuman treatment he was
subjected to. Cruel indeed did he find it there. His master was a young
man, "fond of drinking and carousing, and always ready for a fight or a
knock-down." A short time before John left his master whipped him so
severely with the "bull whip" that he could not use his arm for three or
four days. Seeing but one way of escape (and that more perilous than the
way William and Ellen Craft, or Henry Box Brown traveled), he resolved
to try it. It was to get on the top of the car, instead of inside of it,
and thus ride of nights, till nearly daylight, when, at a stopping-place
on the road, he would slip off the car, and conceal himself in the woods
until under cover of the next night he could manage to get on the top of
another car. By this most hazardous mode of travel he reached Virginia.

It may be best not to attempt to describe how he suffered at the hands
of his owners in Alabama; or how severely he was pinched with hunger in
traveling; or how, when he reached his old neighborhood in Virginia, he
could not venture to inquire for his mother, brothers or sisters, to
receive from them an affectionate word, an encouraging smile, a crust of
bread, or a drink of water.

Success attended his efforts for more than two weeks; but alas, after
having got back north of