Helm could not hold me as a slave in that State, if I chose to leave him, and then directed me to D.Comstock and J.
Moore; the first being at the head of a manumission society, and the last named gentleman one of its directors.
Our condition, as I have said before, was greatly improved; and yet the more we knew of freedom the more we desired it, and the less willing were we to remain in bondage.

The slaves that Capt.

Helm had sold or hired out, were continually leaving him and the country, for a place of freedom; and I determined to become my own possessor.
There is no one, I care not how favorable his condition, who desires to be a slave, to labor for nothing all his life for the benefit of others.

I have often heard fugitive slaves say, that it was not so much the cruel beatings and floggings that they received which induced them to leave the South, as the idea of dragging out a whole life of unrequited toil to enrich their masters.
Everywhere that Slavery exists, it is nothing but _slavery_.

I found it just as hard to be beaten over the head with a piece of iron in New York as it was in Virginia.