We returned to Bath in a sleigh, and arrived without accident or any great suffering.  But the kind treatment I had always received from the Messrs. Tower and family, made it very hard for me to reconcile myself to my former mode of living; especially now that I was lame and weak, from sickness and long confinement; besides, it was cold weather.  Oh! how hard it did seem to me, after having a good bed and plenty of bed clothes every night for so long time, to now throw myself down, like a dog, on the “softest side” of a rough board, without a pillow, and without a particle of bedding to cover me during the long cold nights of winter.  To be reduced from a plentiful supply of good, wholesome food, to the mere pittance which the Captain allowed his slaves, seemed to me beyond endurance.

And yet I had always lived and fared thus, but I never felt so bitterly these hardships and the cruelties of Slavery as I did at that time; making a virtue of necessity, however, I turned my thoughts in another direction.

I managed to purchase a spelling book, and set about teaching myself to read, as best I could.  Every spare moment I could find was devoted to that employment, and when about my work I could catch now and then a stolen glance at my book, just to refresh my memory with the simple lesson I was trying to learn.  But here Slavery showed its cloven foot in all its hideous deformity.  It finally reached the ears of my master that I was learning to read; and then, if he saw me with a book or a paper in my hand, oh, how he would swear at me, sending me off in a hurry, about some employment.  Still I persevered, but was more careful about being seen making any attempt to learn to read.  At last, however, I was discovered, and had to pay the penalty of my determination.

I had been set to work in the sugar bush, and I took my spelling book with me.  When a spare moment occurred I sat down to study, and so absorbed was I in the attempt to blunder through my lesson, that I did not hear the Captain’s son-in-law coming until he was fairly upon me.  He sprang forward, caught my poor old spelling book, and threw it into the fire, where it was burned to ashes; and then came my turn.  He gave me first a severe flogging, and then swore if he ever caught me with another book, he would “whip every inch of skin off my back,” &c.

This treatment, however, instead of giving me the least idea of giving it up, only made me look upon it as a more valuable attainment.  Else, why should my oppressors feel so unwilling that their slaves should possess that which they thought so essential to themselves?  Even then, with my back bleeding and smarting from the punishment I had received, I determined to learn to read and write, at all hazards, if my life was only spared.  About this time Capt.  Helm began to sell off his slaves to different persons, as he could find opportunity, and sometimes at a great sacrifice.  It became apparent that the Captain, instead of prospering in business, was getting poorer every day.