Jim said it made
him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I
can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear
him, because I begun to get it through my head that he was most
free—and who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest; I couldn’t stay still in one place.

That was where it pinched.
Conscience says to me, “What had poor Miss Watson done to you
that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book,she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. That’s what she done.”

Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself.
He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a
free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which
was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then
they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn’t sell them, they’d get an Ab’litionist to go and steal
them.

“Well, there’s five niggers run off tonight up yonder, above the head of the bend. Is your man white or black?”
I didn’t answer up prompt. I tried to, but the words wouldn’t come.
I tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn’t
man enough—hadn’t the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening; so I just give up trying, and up and says:
“He’s white.”

Here, I’ll put a twenty-dollar gold piece on this board, and you get it when it floats by. I feel mighty mean to leave you; but my kingdom! it won’t do to fool with small-pox, don’t you see?”
“Hold on, Parker,” says the other man, “here’s a twenty to put on
the board for me. Good-bye, boy; you do as Mr. Parker told you, and you’ll be all right.”

s’pose you’d a done right and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I’d feel bad—I’d feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn’t answer that.So I reckoned I wouldn’t bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.