The Underground Railroad eBook

William Still
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,446 pages of information about The Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad eBook

William Still
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,446 pages of information about The Underground Railroad.

They proceeded on their voyage and landed at their place of destination.  Rache sees the cow snuffing the land breeze and darting off through the crowd.  The captain of the vessel points to the cow and motions her to follow its example.  She needs nothing more.  Again she is acting—­she is now the cow; but human caution, shrewdness, purpose, are lent to animal instinct.  She looks around her with wary eye—­scents the air—­a flash, and she is hidden from the crowd which you see around her—­she is free!  Making her way northward, she finally arrived at the house of Emmer Kimber, Kimberton, Chester county, Pa., and proving a remarkably capable woman, she remained a considerable time in his family, as a cook.  She finally married, and settled in West Chester, where the pair prospered and were soon surrounded by the comforts of a neat home.  After several years of peaceful life there, she was one day alarmed, not by the heirs of her dead master, but by the loathed “Mort Cunningham,” who, without the shadow of legal right, had come to carry her back to Slavery.  Fear lent her wings.  She darted into a hatter’s shop and out through the back buildings, springing over a dye kettle in her way, and cleared a board fence at a bound.  On her way to a place of safety she looked back to see, with keen enjoyment, “Mort Cunningham” falling backward from the fence she had leaped.  Secure in a garret, she looked down into the streets below, to see his vacant, dazed look as he sought, unable to find her.  Her rendering of the expression of his face at this time, was irresistibly ludicrous, as was that of his whole bearing while searching for her.  “Mort Cunningham” did not get her, but whether or not she ever returned to the enjoyment of her happy home, in West Chester, we never knew, as this sudden flight was the last we ever heard of her.  She was one of the most wide-awake of human beings, and the world certainly lost in the uneducated slave, an actor of great dramatic power.

FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER.

The narratives and labors of eminent colored men such as Banneker, Douglass, Brown, Garnet, and others, have been written and sketched very fully for the public, and doubtless with advantage to the cause of freedom.  But there is not to be found in any written work portraying the Anti-Slavery struggle, (except in the form of narratives,) as we are aware of, a sketch of the labors of any eminent colored woman.  We feel, therefore, not only glad of the opportunity to present a sketch not merely of the leading colored poet in the United States, but also of one of the most liberal contributors, as well as one of the ablest advocates of the Underground Rail Road and of the slave.

No extravagant praise of any kind,—­only simple facts are needed to portray the noble deeds of this faithful worker.

The want of space forbids more than a brief reference to her early life.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Underground Railroad from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.