copy from the Bible and the Methodist hymn books at night when he was
supposed to be asleep. He always regarded this religious experience as
the most important part of his education; it had the effect, not only
of enlarging his mind, but also of restraining his impatience, and
softening a disposition that was growing hard and bitter with brooding
over the disadvantages suffered by himself and his race. He greatly
needed something that would help him to look beyond his bondage and
encourage him to hope for ultimate freedom.

While he was undergoing this, to him, novel religious experience, and
while he was gradually being adjusted to the situation in which he
found himself, there came one of those dreaded changes in the fortunes
of slavemasters that made the status of the slave painfully uncertain.
His real master, Captain Anthony, died, and this event, complicated
with some family quarrel, resulted in Douglass being recalled from
Baltimore to the plantation. . . .

A man named Edward Covey, living at Bayside, at no great distance from
the campground where Thomas Auld was converted, had a wide reputation
for "breaking in unruly niggers." Covey was a "poor white" and a farm
renter. To this man Douglass was hired out for a year. In the month
of January, 1834, he started for his new master, with his little bundle
of clothes. From what we have already seen of this sensitive,
thoughtful young slave of seventeen years, it is not difficult to
understand his state of mind. Up to this time he had had a
comparatively easy life. He had seldom suffered hardships such as fell
to the lot of many slaves whom he knew. To quote his own words: "I was
now about to sound profounder depths in slave-life. Starvation made me
glad to leave Thomas Auld's, and the cruel lash made me dread to go to
Covey's." Escape, however, was impossible. The picture of the