I lived in Master Hugh’s family about seven years.  During this time, I succeeded in learning to read and write.  In accomplishing this, I was compelled to resort to various stratagems.  I had no regular teacher.  My mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by any one else.  It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately.  She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness.  It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute.

My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tenderhearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another.  In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so.  Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me.  When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman.  There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear.  She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach.  Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities.  Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.  The first step in her downward course was in her ceasing to instruct me.  She now commenced to practise her husband’s precepts.  She finally became even more violent in her opposition than her husband himself.  She was not satisfied with simply doing as well as he had commanded; she seemed anxious to do better.  Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see me with a newspaper.  She seemed to think that here lay the danger.  I have had her rush at me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that fully revealed her apprehension.  She was an apt woman; and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other.

From this time I was most narrowly watched.  If I was in a separate room any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and was at once called to give an account of myself.  All this, however, was too late.  The first step had been taken.  Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell.