anti-slavery man, was fitting out a vessel for a whaling voyage,
upon which there was a heavy job of calking and coppering to be
done. I had some skill in both branches, and applied to Mr. French
for work. He, generous man that he was, told me he would employ
me, and I might go at once to the vessel. I obeyed him, but upon
reaching the float-stage, where others [sic] calkers were at work,
I was told that every white man would leave the ship, in her
unfinished condition, if I struck a blow at my trade upon her.
This uncivil, inhuman, and selfish treatment was not so shocking
and scandalous in my eyes at the time as it now appears to me.
Slavery had inured me to hardships that made ordinary trouble sit
lightly upon me. Could I have worked at my trade I could have
earned two dollars a day, but as a common laborer I received but
one dollar. The difference was of great importance to me, but if
I could not get two dollars, I was glad to get one; and so I went
to work for Mr. French as a common laborer. The consciousness
that I was free--no longer a slave--kept me cheerful under this,
and many similar proscriptions, which I was destined to meet in
New Bedford and elsewhere on the free soil of Massachusetts.
For instance, though colored children attended the schools,
and were treated kindly by their teachers, the New Bedford Lyceum
refused, till several years after my residence in that city,
to allow any colored person to attend the lectures delivered in its
hall. Not until such men as Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horace Mann refused to lecture in their
course while there was such a restriction, was it abandoned.

Becoming satisfied that I could not rely on my trade in New
Bedford to give me a living, I prepared myself to do any kind of
work that came to hand. I sawed wood, shoveled coal, dug cellars,