• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

In the early morning, a few days later, several companies from a Northern regiment passed the house. Some of the men got into conversation with Moses, and it did not take them long to discover that he was an exceptional man. After questioning him and getting some idea of his history, of their own accord they proposed that they release him from slavery and take him with them or send him North. Moses had no family or relatives, and nothing to bind him to the Virginia plantation.

There was no slave in all the South who had more earnestly longed for freedom than he had, and now the moment had come when he could obtain that for which he had so long wished. I have said that he had nothing to bind him to the Virginia plantation and to slavery. Yes, there was one thing: Moses had given his word to his master that he would protect and support the white people on the plantation during his master's absence, and no promise of freedom could make him break his word.

In the afternoon of the same day another group of straggling Northern soldiers came past the house. Before they reached it they had heard interesting stories of the wealth of the owners of Moses, especially their wealth in old silver plate and similar articles. Some of the more villainous of the soldiers resolved to possess themselves of as much of this silver as possible. When they approached the house they were met by Moses, who informed them politely that the male members of the family were away, and that he was in charge. Without any great amount of hesitation the soldiers told him what they wanted. The slave civilly but firmly gave his hearers to understand that although he knew where the valuables of the family were, it was a secret which he would share with no one. The soldiers at first tried to bribe him with money, and then, when that had no effect, with the offer of freedom, but with the same result. Then they tried to frighten him by threats of bodily harm, but he was not moved.

As a last resort, a rope was procured and he was strung up by his thumbs, but to no purpose. This terrible torture was repeated twice, and then half a dozen times. The slave was finally in such a condition of collapse by reason of this torture that he could scarcely stand or speak, but still he had strength of manhood enough to repeat over and over again, "No, no." Finally, seeing that their efforts were in vain, the soldiers departed, with curses upon their lips, but with greater respect in their hearts for the manhood of the negro race.

WILL PHILIP LINING

"How He Saved St. Michael's" is an old, old poem, and the church which the negro slave saved from destruction is said to have been St. Philip's instead of St. Michael's, but the deed was such a brave one that the story of it has lived for a century, and will continue to live.

Something like a hundred years ago a great fire was raging furiously in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Building after building had been destroyed, and a gale of wind carried sparks far and wide to spread the conflagration. The lofty spire of St. Philip's Episcopal Church caught fire almost two hundred feet above the ground, and in an apparently inaccessible place, and the people in the streets below saw with dismay that one of their city's dearest possessions seemed about to be lost to them. Some stanzas from the old poem tell the rest of the story best:

Who is it leans from the belfry, with face upturned to the sky,

Clings to a column and measures the dizzy spire with his eye?

Will he dare it, the hero undaunted, that terrible sickening height?

Or will the hot blood of his courage freeze in his veins at the sight?

But see! he has stepped to the railing; he climbs with his feet and his hands,

And firm on a narrow projection, with the belfry beneath him, he stands;

Now once, and once only, they cheer him — a single tempestuous breath —

And there falls on the multitude gazing a hush like the stillness of death.

Slow, steadily mounting, unheeding aught save the goal of the fire,

Still