"
I distinctly overheard all that was said, and was just as determined
not to be sold as I was not to be whipped. My mother's lawyer had told
her to caution me never to go out of the city, if, at any time, the
white people wanted me to go, so I was quite settled as to my course,
in case Mr. Mitchell undertook to sell me.
Several days after this conversation took place, Mrs. Mitchell, with
her baby and nurse, Lucy Wash, made a visit to her grandmother's,
leaving orders that I should be sold before her return; so I was not
surprised to be ordered by Mr. Mitchell to pack up my clothes and get
ready to go down the river, for I was to be sold that morning, and
leave, on the steamboat Alex. Scott, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
"Can't I go see my mother, first?" I asked.
"No," he replied, not very gently, "there is no time for that, you can
see her when you come back. So hurry up and get ready, and let us have
no more words about it!"
How I did hate him! To hear him talk as if I were going to take a
pleasure trip, when he knew that if he sold me South, as he intended,
I would never see my dear mother again.
However, I hastily ran up stairs and packed my trunk, but my mother's
injunction, "never to go out of the city," was ever present in my
mind.
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