and could earn more of the precious coin,--one must have been in some sense
himself a slave. My next job was stowing a sloop at Uncle Gid. Howland's
wharf with a cargo of oil for New York. I was not only a freeman,
but a free working-man, and no "master" stood ready at the end of the week
to seize my hard earnings.

The season was growing late and work was plenty. Ships were being
fitted out for whaling, and much wood was used in storing them.
The sawing this wood was considered a good job. With the help
of old Friend Johnson (blessings on his memory) I got a saw and "buck,"
and went at it. When I went into a store to buy a cord with which
to brace up my saw in the frame, I asked for a "fip's" worth of cord.
The man behind the counter looked rather sharply at me, and said with
equal sharpness, "You don't belong about here." I was alarmed,
and thought I had betrayed myself. A fip in Maryland was
six and a quarter cents, called fourpence in Massachusetts.
But no harm came from the "fi'penny-bit" blunder, and I confidently
and cheerfully went to work with my saw and buck. It was new business to me,
but I never did better work, or more of it, in the same space of time
on the plantation for Covey, the negro-breaker, than I did for myself
in these earliest years of my freedom.

Notwithstanding the just and humane sentiment of New Bedford
three and forty years ago, the place was not entirely free from
race and color prejudice. The good influence of the Roaches,
Rodmans, Arnolds, Grinnells, and Robesons did not pervade all
classes of its people. The test of the real civilization of the
community came when I applied for work at my trade, and then my
repulse was emphatic and decisive. It so happened that Mr. Rodney
French, a wealthy and enterprising citizen, distinguished as an