Some Dutch masters were cruel to their slaves, but Meinheer van Dyck and the Mistress always showed me kindness in those years. As a young boy I was only given light work. As I grew a little older, Meinheer van Dyck would give me many tasks to do. I always seemed to be fetching and carrying something. But the only time he ever whipped me was after Jan and I had broken a window, and then he took a strap to us both, each getting the same.

When I was about fourteen years of age, Meinheer van Dyck became a more important man of business than he was before, and everyone started to call him Boss, including myself. So from now on I shall call him by that name. And about this time it entered into the mistress’s mind that I should look well dressed up in livery like a servant in a big house. The Boss laughed, but he let her do it, and I looked very well in that livery, which was blue. I was very proud of myself. And the mistress taught me to open the door for guests and wait at table, which pleased me greatly. And she said, “Quash, you have a beautiful smile.” So I made sure to smile all the time, and I was in high favor with her, and the Boss too. One day, the old Dominie Cornelius came to the house. He was a man of great consequence. He was tall, and always dressed in black, and despite his age, he was still very upright. And even he remarked to the Boss’s wife upon my smart appearance. After that, I could do no wrong with her. So I suppose that on account of all this good treatment, I had too great a conceit of myself. Indeed, I believe I thought myself more like an indentured servant than a slave, for a time. And I often thought about what I could do that would cause that family to hold me in higher regard.

It was about a month after his visit to the house that, on an errand for the Mistress, I saw that old dominie in the street, dressed in black and wearing a big pointed black hat with a wide brim. Now it happened that just a few days before, I had conceived a notion of how I might raise myself in the estimation of the Boss and his family; for I remembered that old black man telling me how the freedmen had been allowed to become Christians in the Dutch Church. And so when I saw the old dominie, I went up to him and said, very respectful: “Good morning, sir.” And he gave me a somewhat stern look, because I was interrupting him in his thoughts, but he recognized me and said: “You’re the van Dycks’ slave boy.”