book and wore a cloth on his head instead. He got the sounds of the
letters by heart, then cut off the bark of a tree, carved the letters on
the smooth inside, and learned them. He wanted to learn how to write. He
had charge of a warehouse where he had a chance to see the size and form
of letters. He made the beach of the river his copybook, and thus he
learned to write. Tom never got very far with his learning, but I used
to get the papers and tell him all I knew about the war."

"How did you get the papers?"

"I used to have very good privileges for a slave. All of our owners were
not alike. Some of them were quite clever, and others were worse than
git out. I used to get the morning papers to sell to the boarders and
others, and when I got them I would contrive to hide a paper, and let
some of the fellow-servants know how things were going on. And our
owners thought we cared nothing about what was going on."

"How was that? I thought you were not allowed to hold meetings unless a
white man were present."

"That was so. But we contrived to hold secret meetings in spite of their
caution. We knew whom we could trust. My ole Miss wasn't mean like some
of them. She never wanted the patrollers around prowling in our cabins,
and poking their noses into our business. Her husband was an awful
drunkard. He ran through every cent he could lay his hands on, and she
was forced to do something to keep the wolf from the door, so she set up
a boarding-house. But she didn't take in Tom, Dick, and Harry. Nobody
but the big bugs stopped with her. She taught me to read and write, and
to cast up accounts. It was so handy for her to have some one who could
figure up her accounts, and read or write a note, if she were from home