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1052 READER RESPONSES, 1881 - 93

young wife naturally told her husband of her surprising success with her pupil;
"Master Hugh was astounded beyond measure. and probably for the first time pro-
ceeded to unfold to his wife the true philosophy of the slave system, and the peculiar
rules necessary in the nature of the case to be observed in the management of human
chattels." The philosophy and rules referred to were thus summed up. Teaching a
"nigger" to read was in the first place unlawful, and in the second place unsafe; for,
said he, "if you give a nigger [62.28–34] be running away with himself." And so the
pleasant reading-lessons came to an end, but not the determination of the slave boy
to master that invaluable art. He listened to his master 's cold and cutting words, and
grasped their significance with an intelligence and resolution beyond his years. Mr.
Douglass writes: "'Very well,' thought I, 'knowledge unfits a child to be a slave. I
instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the
direct pathway from slavery to freedom."

How steep and difficult that pathway was, the pages of this aulobiography pro-
ceed to tell. But the task of learning to read was achieved, and by yet more strenuous
efforts the accomplishment of writing was also added. One of the bitterest experi-
ences connected with this effort was the opposition which the slave lad had to
encounter from the very mistress who had taught him his letters. She, having been
convinced by her husband's logic, had become in fact more violent in her opposition
than her instructor in the law and philosophy of slavery; and what is more, as time
passed on, she presented, in her own temper and conduct, a melancholy illustration
of the power of the institution of slavery to work havoc in the heart and life of the
slaveholder, even when that slaveholder is apparently a sweet, kindly, and pious
woman. The predictions of Mr. Auld, the boy's master, as to the dangerous conse-
quences of teaching a slave to read, were, it must he owned, speedily verified. The
boy got hold of a volume called "The Columbian Orator," a favourite school-book
in those days, which seems to have been almost identical with the "Enfield's
Speaker" of our own school-days in this country. His imagination and feelings were
greatly roused by the eloquent orations on liberty, the rights of man, and other sub-
jects which he found in that book, and which he eagerly stored in his memory. As
light flowed in, he realised more and more fully the wrong that had been done in
making him a slave. The sense of that wrong accompanied him like his shadow; he
became silent and gloomy, brooding with fierce resentment over his unhappy lot,
and chafing angrily against the system and the men responsible for it.

In his desolation and misery he learned from a white Methodist minister, whose
teaching was afterwards developed and continued by a good coloured man named
Lawson, that in God he would find the friend and protector for which his lonely and
sorrowful heart was longing, and through prayer and faith he realised the truth of
this message. The religion, which he thus found, was an unspeakable relief and
comfort to him. He says: "I loved all mankind, slaveholders not excepted, though I
abhorred slavery more than ever." His religious communion with old "Uncle
Lawson," however, awakened the wrath and suspicion of his master, who had been