--Lavinia--and one child, Eliza, both slaves. Peter communicated to
his wife his secret intention to leave, and she acquiesced in his going.
He left his parents also. All his sisters and brothers had been sold.
Peter would have been sold too, but his owner was under the impression,
that he was "too good a Christian" to violate the laws by running away.
Peter's master was quite a devoted Methodist, and was attached to the
same Church with Peter. While on the subject of religion, Peter was
asked about the kind and character of preaching that he had been
accustomed to hear; whereupon he gave the following graphic specimen:
"Servants obey your masters; good servants make good masters; when your
mistress speaks to you don't pout out your mouths; when you want to go
to church ask your mistress and master," etc., etc. Peter declared, that
he had never heard but one preacher speak against slavery, and that "one
was obliged to leave suddenly for the North." He said, that a Quaker
lady spoke in meeting against Slavery one day, which resulted in an
outbreak, and final breaking up of the meeting.

PHILLIS GAULT. Phillis was a widow, about thirty years of age; the blood
of two races flowed in about equal proportions through her veins. Such
was her personal appearance, refinement, manners, and intelligence, that
had the facts of her slave life been unknown, she would have readily
passed for one who had possessed superior advantages. But the facts in
her history proved, that she had been made to feel very keenly the
horrifying effects of Slavery; not in the field, for she had never
worked there; nor as a common drudge, for she had always been required
to fill higher spheres; she was a dress-maker--but not without fear of
the auction block. This dreaded destiny was the motive which constrained
her to escape with the twenty others; secreted in the hold of a vessel
expressly arranged for bringing away slaves. Death had robbed her of her
husband at the time that the fever raged so fearfully in Norfolk. This
sad event deprived her of the hope she had of being purchased by her
husband, as he had intended. She was haunted by the constant thought of
again being sold, as she had once been, and as she had witnessed the
sale of her sister's four children after the death of their mother.

Phillis was, to use her own striking expression in a state of "great
horror;" she felt, that nothing would relieve her but freedom. After
having fully pondered