Lydia Maria Child, Isaac T. Hopper: a true life

[376] how a strange thing had come into the house, and run, and jumped, and made a noise. But his lisping language was so very imperfect, that they were unable to conjecture what had so frightened him. For a long time after, he would break out into sudden screams, whenever the remembrance came over him. At seventy-five years old, he told me he remembered exactly how the paper then appeared to him, and what sensations of terror it excited in his infant breast.

He had a large old-fashioned cow-bell, which was always rung to summon the family to their meals. He resisted having one of more modern construction, because he said that pleasantly reminded him of the time when he was a boy, and used to drive the cows to pasture. Sometimes, he rang it much longer than was necessary to summon the household. On such occasions, I often observed him smiling while he stood shaking the bell; and he would say, ‘I am thinking how Polly looked, when the cow kicked her over; milk-pail and all. I can see it just as if it happened yesterday. O, what fun it was!’

He often spoke of the first slave whose escape he managed, in the days of his apprenticeship. He was wont to exclaim, ‘How well I remember the anxious, imploring look that poor fellow gave me, when I told him I would be his friend! It rises up ’