calkers.  I was now of some importance to my master.  I was bringing him from six to seven dollars per week.  I sometimes brought him nine dollars per week:  my wages were a dollar and a half a day.  After learning how to calk, I sought my own employment, made my own contracts, and collected the money which I earned.  My pathway became much more smooth than before; my condition was now much more comfortable.  When I could get no calking to do, I did nothing.  During these leisure times, those old notions about freedom would steal over me again.  When in Mr. Gardner’s employment, I was kept in such a perpetual whirl of excitement, I could think of nothing, scarcely, but my life; and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty.  I have observed this in my experience of slavery,—­that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom.  I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.  It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.  He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.

I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day.  I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh.  And why?  Not because he earned it,—­not because he had any hand in earning it,—­not because I owed it to him,—­nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up.  The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same.

CHAPTER XI

I now come to that part of my life during which I planned, and finally succeeded in making, my escape from slavery.  But before narrating any of the peculiar circumstances, I deem it proper to make known my intention not to state all the facts connected with the transaction.  My reasons for pursuing this course may be understood from the following:  First, were I to give a minute statement of all the facts, it is not only possible, but quite probable, that others would thereby be involved in the most embarrassing difficulties.  Secondly, such a statement would most undoubtedly induce greater vigilance on the part of slaveholders than has existed heretofore among them; which would, of course, be the means of guarding a door whereby some dear brother bondman might escape his galling chains.  I deeply regret the necessity that impels me to suppress any thing of importance connected with my experience in slavery.  It would afford me great pleasure indeed, as well as materially add to the interest of my narrative, were