Page:Father Henson's story of his own life.djvu/78

60 the torments of hell seized upon me. My eyes were opened, and the guilty madness of my conduct in preventing them from availing themselves of the opportunity for acquiring freedom, which offered itself at Cincinnati, overwhelmed me. This, then, was the reward and end of all my faithfulness to my master. I had thought of him only and his interests, not of them or their welfare. Oh ! what would I not have given to have had the chance offered once more! And now, through me, were they doomed to wear out life miserably in the hot and pestilential climate of the far south. Death would have been welcome to me in my agony. From that hour I saw through, hated, and cursed the whole system of slavery. One absorbing purpose occupied my soul—freedom, self-assertion, deliverance from the cruel caprices and fortunes of dissolute tyrants. Once to get away, with my wife and children, to some spot where I could feel that they were indeed mine—where no grasping master could stand between me and them, as arbiter of their destiny—was a heaven