servant from the plantation. He was much petted and well fed,
permitted to wear boy's clothes and shoes, and for the first time in
his life had a good soft bed to sleep in. His only duty was to take
care of and play with Tommy Auld, which he found both an easy and
agreeable task.

Young Douglass yet knew nothing about reading. A book was as much of a
mystery to him as the stars at night. When he heard his mistress read
aloud from the Bible, his curiosity was aroused. He felt so secure in
her kindness that he had the boldness to ask her to teach him.
Following her natural impulse to do kindness to others, and without,
for a moment, thinking of the danger, she at once consented. He
quickly learned the alphabet and in a short time could spell words of
three syllables. But alas, for his young ambition! When Mr. Auld
discovered what his wife had done, he was both surprised and pained.
He at once stopped the perilous practice, but it was too late. The
precocious young slave had acquired a taste for book learning. He
quickly understood that these mysterious characters called letters were
the keys to a vast empire from which he was separated by an enforced
ignorance. In discussing the matter with his wife, Mr. Auld said: "If
you teach him to read, he will want to know how to write, and with this
accomplished, he will be running away with himself." Mr. Douglass,
referring to this conversation in later years, said: "This was
decidedly the first anti-slavery speech to which I had ever listened.
From that moment, I understood the direct pathway from slavery to
freedom."

During the subsequent six years that he lived in Baltimore in the home
of Mr. Auld he was more closely watched than he had been before this
incident, and his liberty to go and come was considerably curtailed.