that book; knowing the names of persons to whom certain pieces of work
were charged, together with their prices, I strove anxiously to learn to
write in this way. I got paper, and picked up feathers about the yard, and
made ink of ---- berries. My quills being too soft, and my skill in making
a pen so poor, that I undertook some years ago to make a steel pen.[A] In
this way I have learnt to make a few of the letters, but I cannot write my
own name, nor do I know the letters of the alphabet."

[Footnote A: This attempt was as early as 1822.]

_W.W., (handing a slate and pencil.)_--"Let me see how thee makes letters;
try such as thou hast been able to make easily."

A.B.C.L.G.

_P.W., (wife of W.W.)_--"Why, those are better than I can make."

_W.W._--"Oh, we can soon get thee in the way, James."

Arithmetic and astronomy became my favourite studies. W.W. was an
accomplished scholar; he had been a teacher for some years, and was
cultivating a small farm on account of ill-health, which had compelled him
to leave teaching. He is one of the most far-sighted and practical men I
ever met with. He taught me by familiar conversations, illustrating his
themes by diagrams on the slate, so that I caught his ideas with ease and
rapidity.

I now began to see, for the first time, the extent of the mischief slavery
had done to me. Twenty-one years of my life were gone, never again to
return, and I was as profoundly ignorant, comparatively, as a child five