kindly to the boy, yet he told him very decidedly that he must not come
there without a written permission from his master. "Well, then, I can't
come at all, sir," said Lewis sorrowfully.

"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."