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FOREWORD

One of the benefits conferred by education is that of enlightening the mind on the subject of one's duty. Finding what is duty the manner of discharging it will suggest itself to the alert, the active, and those of industrious and intelligent discernment. Perhaps forever hidden would remain the necessity for certain tasks were it not for the inspiration idealists receive from education. This education, if proper and well rounded, also forces all who embrace it into the line of work promising the accomplishment of the greatest achievements-achievements such as in leaving foot-prints on the sands of time leave no mark of dishonor but such as really and truly do give new heart and new hope and new courage to the weaker brother.
That Martha Schofield was inspired by the highest motives that possibly could influence any one in choosing an occupation to be made a life-work is evidenced by the personal sacrifices she made in order to engage in it. The fortitude with which she bore the poison sting of slander, the cruel whip of character assassination and braved the threats of personal violence forcibly attests the sincerity actuating her in pursuing her chosen work.
The results accomplished by the fifty years of earnest endeavor by her form a tribute to efficiency of women in administrative affairs that is seldom ever equaled by other human beings claiming greater strenght by reason of sex. When the final history of the war between ignorance and enlightenment, between superstition and science, between vice and virtue shall have been written of the colored race the foremost name among all will be - Martha Schofield - Pioneer Negro Educator.
Matilda A. Evans, M. D.,
Columbia, S.C.

Martha Schofield 

CHAPTER I
The Hunted Beast
A woman apparently thirty years of age, of mulatto skin, fell limp into a chair in the kitchen of Mrs. Oliver Schofield of Darby, Bucks County, Pensylvania about the year 1857, with blood hounds and the voices of angry men following close upon her heels through the tangled swamps from which she had just emerged.
"Who can thee be? Who can thee be?- and what does thee want here?" inquired excited Mrs. Schofield as she dropped te dish rag nd rushed to the prostate form in the chair, eager to render aid and comfort to the suffering and afflicted woman as well as to ascertain the cause of her abrupt, unannounced entrance into her home.
Out of breath from the long run made necessary to escape the dogs and the traps laid by experienced officers of the law who had been so diligently upon her trail for more han a week, that she had had time to stop and rest and take nourishment for only a few minutes at a time, Laura Duncan was unable at first to give any coherent account of herself. She managed, however, to make it known to the kind Quaker lady that she was an escaped slave and was endeavoring with all speed possible to reach the Canadian border and enter the world of freedom, which she had been informed existed under the British flag in the Dominion of Canada for all who might enter that country.
As causes moving her to take this drastic step in defiance of the law of her own land and the possibility of involving the liberty and happiness of all who might be kind enough to assist her in the accomlishment of the task, she recited such evils as brought tears to the eyes of her enforced host. She exibited a lash scared back,