“Ask him, at any rate,” was the reply.  “I’d like to have you come very well; but I’m afraid he will think I want to steal one of his boys, if I allow you to come here without his consent.”

It was with much fear that Lewis made known his wish to his master, and he was received, as he expected to be, with abuse.

“You would like to be a smart nigger, I suppose; one of the kind that talks saucy to his master and runs away.  I’ll make you smart.  I’m smart enough myself for all my niggers; and if they want any more of the stuff, I’ll give them some of the right sort,” said he with vulgar wit, as he laid his riding-whip about the shoulders of poor Lewis.

But when Mr. Stamford found that Lewis had already been to Mr. Pond’s Sunday school, he made a more serious matter of it, and the poor boy received his first severe flogging, twenty-five lashes on his bare back.

“I hope now,” said Aunt Sally, while dressing his welted and wounded back with wet linen, “that you’ll give up that silly notion of your’n, that of learnin’ to read.  It’s of no use, and these ’ere learned niggers are always gettin’ into trouble.  I know massa’d half kill one, if he had ’im.  Now, if you belonged to Massa Pond ’twould be different.”  And so she went on; but the more she talked the more firmly Lewis made up his mind that he would learn to read if he could, and the words of his mother came to his mind with authority:  “If you’re going to be a free man you’ll want to know how to read.”

About two months after this he paid another visit to Sam Tyler.  Sam’s plot of ground and cabin was near the division line between the two farms, and Lewis took his time to go down there after dark.  He asked Sam to teach him to read.

“I should think you’d got enough of that,” said Sam.  “I shouldn’t think it would pay.”

“What would you take for what you know about readin’?” asked Lewis.

“Well, I can’t say as I’d like to sell it, but it would only be a plague to you so long as you belong to Massa Stamford.”

By dint of coaxing, however, Lewis succeeded in getting him to teach him the letters, taking the opportunity to go to him rainy nights, or when Mr. Stamford was away from home.  That was the end of Sam’s help.  He had an “idea in his head” that it was not good policy for him to do this without Massa Stamford’s consent, after what Mr. Pond had said about Lewis’s coming to Sunday school.  Sam was a cautious negro, not so warm-hearted and impulsive as the most of his race.  He prided himself on being more like white folks.

Lewis was soon in trouble of another sort.  He had found an old spelling-book, and Sam had shown him that the letters he had learned were to be put together to make words.  Then, too, he managed to get a little time to himself every morning, by rising very early.  So far so good, and his diligence was deserving of success, but the progress he made was very discouraging.  C-a-n spelled sane, n-o-t