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Thief!
Stop Thief!’
An Irishman, who joined in the pursuit, arrested the fugitive and brought him back to his master.
Friend Hopper remonstrated with him; saying, ‘The man is not a thief.
They claim him for a slave, and he was running for liberty.
How wouldst thou like to be made a slave?’
The kind-hearted Hibernian replied, ‘Then they lied; for they said he was a thief.
If he is a slave, I'm sorry I stopped him. However, I will put him in as good a condition as I found him.’
So saying, he went near the man who had the fugitive in custody, and seized him by the collar with a sudden jerk, that threw him on the pavement.
The slave instantly started, and ran at his utmost speed, again followed by the cry of ‘Stop Thief!’
Having run some distance, and being nearly out of breath, he darted into the shop of a watch-maker, named Samuel Mason, who immediately closed and fastened his door, so that the crowd could not follow him. The fugitive passed out of the back door, and was never afterward recaptured.
The disappointed master brought an action against Samuel Mason for rescuing his slave.
Charles J. Ingersoll and his brother Joseph, two accomplished lawyers of Philadelphia, conducted the trial for him, with zeal and ingenuity worthy of a better cause.
Isaac T. Hopper was summoned as a witness, and in
Boston, J. P. Jewett and Company; Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor and Worthington; London; Low and Company, 1854.
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