Again she wept, and repeated, “I do want to be free.”  But she was evidently bewildered and distrustful, and did not know how to understand the opposite professions that were made to her.

On representation of the claimant’s friends, Judge Oakley adjourned the case till the next morning; telling the woman she was at liberty to go with whom she pleased.  The colored people had assembled in considerable numbers, and were a good deal excited.  Experience led them to suppose that she would either be cajoled into consenting to return to slavery, or else secretly packed off to New-Orleans, if she were left in Southern hands.  They accordingly made haste to hustle her away.  But their well-intended zeal terrified the poor bewildered creature, and she escaped from them, and went back to her mistress.

The pro-slavery papers chuckled, as they always do, when some poor ignorant victim is deceived by false representation, alarmed by an excitement that she does not comprehend, afraid that strangers are not telling her the truth, or that they have not the power to protect her; and in continual terror of future punishment, if she should attempt to take her freedom, and yet be unable to maintain it.  Great is the triumph of republicans, when, under such trying circumstances, one poor bewildered wretch goes back to slavery; but of the hundreds, who every month take their freedom, through fire and flood, and all manner of deadly perils, they are as silent as the grave.

In the spring of 1841, I went to New-York to edit the Anti-Slavery Standard, and took up my abode with the family of Isaac T. Hopper.  The zealous theological controversy among Friends naturally subsided after the separation between the opposing parties had become an old and settled fact.  Consequently the demand for Quaker books diminished more and more.  The Anti-Slavery Society, at that time, needed a Treasurer and Book-Agent; and Friend Hopper was proposed as a suitable person for that office.  As only a small portion of his time was occupied with the sale of books he had on hand, he concluded to accept the proposition.  He was then nearly seventy years old; but he appeared at least twenty years younger, in person and manners.  His firm, elastic step seemed like a vigorous man of fifty.  He would spring from the Bowery cars, while they were in motion, with as much agility as a lad of fourteen.  His hair was not even sprinkled with gray.  It looked so black and glossy, that a young lady, who was introduced to him, said she thought he wore a wig unnaturally dark for his age.  It was a favorite joke of his to make strangers believe he wore a wig; and they were not easily satisfied that he spoke in jest, until they examined his head.