"FrederickDouglass-MyEscapeFromSlavery" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Frederick)

when I was coming back, etc. I got away from my old and inconvenient
acquaintance as soon as I could decently do so, and went to another part
of the boat. Once across the river, I encountered a new danger.
Only a few days before, I had been at work on a revenue cutter,
in Mr. Price's ship-yard in Baltimore, under the care of Captain McGowan.
On the meeting at this point of the two trains, the one going
south stopped on the track just opposite to the one going north,
and it so happened that this Captain McGowan sat at a window where
he could see me very distinctly, and would certainly have recognized
me had he looked at me but for a second. Fortunately, in the hurry
of the moment, he did not see me; and the trains soon passed each
other on their respective ways. But this was not my only hair-
breadth escape. A German blacksmith whom I knew well was on the
train with me, and looked at me very intently, as if he thought
he had seen me somewhere before in his travels. I really
believe he knew me, but had no heart to betray me. At any rate,
he saw me escaping and held his peace.

The last point of imminent danger, and the one I dreaded most,
was Wilmington. Here we left the train and took the steam-boat
for Philadelphia. In making the change here I again apprehended arrest,
but no one disturbed me, and I was soon on the broad and beautiful Delaware,
speeding away to the Quaker City. On reaching Philadelphia in the afternoon,
I inquired of a colored man how I could get on to New York. He directed me
to the William-street depot, and thither I went, taking the train that night.
I reached New York Tuesday morning, having completed the journey in less
than twenty-four hours.

My free life began on the third of September, 1838. On the morning
of the fourth of that month, after an anxious and most perilous but safe
journey, I found myself in the big city of New York, a FREE MAN--
one more added to the mighty throng which, like the confused waves
of the troubled sea, surged to and fro between the lofty walls of Broadway.
Though dazzled with the wonders which met me on every hand, my thoughts
could not be much withdrawn from my strange situation. For the moment,
the dreams of my youth and the hopes of my manhood were completely fulfilled.
The bonds that had held me to "old master" were broken. No man now
had a right to call me his slave or assert mastery over me. I was
in the rough and tumble of an outdoor world, to take my chance with
the rest of its busy number. I have often been asked how I felt
when first I found myself on free soil. There is scarcely anything
in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer.
A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath and the
"quick round of blood," I lived more in that one day than in a year
of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words
can but tamely describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after
reaching New York, I said: "I felt as one might feel upon escape
from a den of hungry lions." Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain,
may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill
of pen or pencil. During ten or fifteen years I had been, as it were,