[Gutenberg 62165] • From Dixie to Canada: Romances and Realities of the Underground Railroad

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER I. JO NORTON. I. SO many and varied have been the changes of half a century, and so rapid the growth of the city in the past twenty-five years, that few of the present inhabitants of Washington, and less of its old-time frequenters, now ever think of the cemetery that skirted the stage road leading north from the city. True, in those by-gone days it was a popular burial place, even for the first families of the capital, but like many another " silent city " it long since fell into disuse, and consequently became for years the most desirable place near the city for an underground railroad station, and to such use it was assidiously appropriated. In this solitary place, on a quiet Sabbath evening of October, 1839, there was heard just as the last faint twilight trembled on the western horizon a low, distinct whistle. Immediately there arose from among the growth of bushes and from behind already reclining headstones five dusky forms, actuated evidently by the same impulse. The whistle was repeated, and the forms cautiously approached the point whence it proceeded, and there gathered in presence of a stranger to them all, but with no previous knowledge of each other's intent, though all of them were the property of the same man, Colonel Hardy, a tobacco planter of the District of Columbia, as previously stated in the " Introduction " to these "Romances and Realities." The first exclamations of surprise over, their unknown companion proceeded to give them the instructions for the night, after allaying their superstitious fears, that they were to sink into the earth for a time, and be under the conduct of invisible personages. Indeed, so far from that being the case they soon found very much depended upon their own physical exertion....