Such a narration would fill a volume much larger than the present one.

I aim only to give the reader a truthful impression of my slave life, without unnecessarily affecting him with harrowing details.
As I have elsewhere intimated that my hardships were much greater during the first six months of my stay at Covey's, than during the remainder of the year, and as the change in my condition was owing to causes which may help the reader to a better understanding of human nature, when subjected to the terrible extremities of slavery, I will narrate the circumstances of this{173} change, although I may seem thereby to applaud my own courage.

You have, dear reader, seen me humbled, degraded, broken down, enslaved, and brutalized, and you understand how it was done; now let us see the converse of all this, and how it was brought about; and this will take us through the year 1834.
On one of the hottest days of the month of August, of the year just mentioned, had the reader been passing through Covey's farm, he might have seen me at work, in what is there called the "treading yard"-- a yard upon which wheat is trodden out from the straw, by the horses' feet.

I was there, at work, feeding the "fan," or rather bringing wheat to the fan, while Bill Smith was feeding.

Our force consisted of Bill Hughes, Bill Smith, and a slave by the name of Eli; the latter having been hired for this occasion.