The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-04-24
A JOURNEY IN A COFFIN.
.Bo.ton letter in New Yors rribnne.

Boston letter in New | Ork Tribune.
 " Do remember any incidents of the underground railroad that haven't got into print?" said an old aholitionist and slave-rescuer the other night in response to a question We'll there is one story that don't remember to have seen in the books or the papers. In 1859. just in the height of the agitation = our agent at Columbia S C. had occasion to ticket a middle-aged negro, Job 1an- cey by name, through to Providence k. l., by the underground. Job had shel- tered a runawav in his cabin and had been betrayed by another negro. He learned the situation and came to Co lumhia in the middle of the night There was no hope of concealing him. Our agent had thought of new means of shipment that he had never tried This was his opportunity to try it. for Job was clear grit strong with the we'll knit strength of middlc-agc and patient as his namcsake
 N got out large coffin that he had kept for the emergency, and into this coffin he put poor Job and with him quantity of crackers cheese, dried meat and a rubber bag full of water, \ few gimblet holes admitted air. On the first train in the morning Job Hancy went oil, shipped as a corpse to a chosen address in Providence. Trainmcn Were generally respectful of the dead in those days and Job travelled comfortably for a time barring the hours that he occas- ionally lay on some depot platform in the broiling southern sun. Travel was -l l,,r md f la. q little rough Job. after a day or so. began to get exceedingly lame with the confinement and pressure, his grim berth grew irk~ome, but it was when the loud shouts and laughter of his own kind died away around him and when that and the sickening chill came oyer him when they dumped him one night on the stone floor of a cold bagee-room somewhere told him that he was in the north. that he began to suffer The mere consciousness that he was in the north might have huoved him up, how ever, if 1t had not been for one dreadful circumstance.
 There was a sort of a faint gleam around him that told him it was day and he must have been in New \ Iork for he says that he knew that he had been carried across some water bV the sensation of rising and falling that he had felt He had felt himself rattled along in wagon, too, and the wagon had brought ur in place where he had heard the chatter and roar of trains again. His coffin was dragged violently out of the wagon, and when his bearers put him down they stood the coffin against a wtll-on it's head He felt that he Was lost and would die but he dared not shout for help. That would mean discovery and delivery to his owners, and worse than death Better die there; even horrible death from torture than be carri,.d back to his mas ters plantation. He clung to his deter imitation, but al last he felt his weak cned senses give way, His conscious ness, after minutes of agony, which seemed hours, was lost
 then he recovered Job had actually arrived at Providence and his new found tricndS-hetter friends than he had eyer known--wcre using their best cndeav- or> to restore him. In few days he was able to step out into the world, in home in a chosen village a free man.