“Arter this I lived in Old Springfield and was sexton of the church there; and while I rung that bell I heard good preachin’ every Sunday, and I larnt more ’bout religion than I’d ever knowed in all my life. I begun to feel a good deal more serious and the need of gettin’ religion.
“Arter my time was out there, I went down to New York, and there I met Solena’s brother, and that brought every thing fresh to mind agin, and for weeks agin I spent sorrowful hours. I thought I had about got over it and the wound was healed; but then ‘twould git tore open agin and bleed afresh, and sorrowful as ever. It did seem to me that nothin’ would banish the image of that gal from my heart.
“I used to call and see Susan Macy occasionally, and she was now Mrs. Williams, and lived in good style tu, for a colored person. She was married at Mr. Macy’s and they made a great weddin’, and all the genteel darkies in New York was there; and I wan’t satisfied with waitin’ on _one_, I must have _two_, and if we didn’t have a stir among our color about them times I miss my guess; and Mr. Macy set her out with five hundred dollars, and she had a fine husband and they lived together as comfortable as you please.
“Now I concluded I’d quit the city for good, I spent more money there and had worse habits, and besides all this I wanted to git away as fur as I could from the scene of my disappintment.
“Well, I pulled up stakes agin and put out for the Bay State agin, and I put into Westfield, and stayed there eighteen months, and made money and saved it, and behaved myself, and ‘tended meetin’ every sabba’day, and gained friends and was as respectable as any body. From Westfield I went to Sharon and there I stayed six months, and ‘tended a saw mill, and there was a colored man there by the name of Joshua Nichols, who had married a fine gal, and he lived with her till she had one child and then left her, and went out to Columbia county, New York; and I started off for Albany, and she axed me if I wouldn’t find her husband on my route, and so I left Sharon and got here to Spencertown, and found him, and axed him why he would be so cruel as to leave his wife? He says ‘if you’ll go and carry some money and a letter down to her I’ll pay you.’ So he gin me the things and I put out for Sharon, and when Miss Nichols broke open the letter she burst into tears, and says I, “why Miss Nichols what’s the matter?” “Why Joshua says this is the last letter I may ever expect from him.”—Well, I stayed one night, and come back and concluded I’d go on for Albany, but when I got to Erastus Pratt’s he wanted to hire me six months, and I hired, and his family was nice folks, and he had a whole fleet of gals—and they was all as fine as silk, but I used to tell Aunt Phebe, that Harriet was the rather the nicest—on ’em all. Arter my six months was out, I worked a month in shoein’ up his family, and I guess like enough some on ’em may be in the garret yet.