all
eyes. Everything he saw and read suggested to him a larger world lying
just beyond his reach. The meaning of the term "Abolition" came to him
by a chance look at a Baltimore newspaper.

Slavery and Abolition! The distance between these two points of
existence seemed to have lessened greatly after he had comprehended
their meaning. "When I heard the Word 'Abolition,' I felt the matter
to be my personal concern. There was hope in this word." As he
afterward went about the city on his ordinary errands, or when at the
wharf, even performing tasks that were not set for him to do, he was
like another being. That word "Abolition" seemed to sing itself into
his very soul, and when he permitted his thoughts to dwell on the
possibilities that it opened to him, he was buoyed up with joyous
expectations. He tried to find out something from everybody. He
learned to write by copying letters on fences and walls and challenging
his white playmates to find his mistakes; and at night, when no one
suspected him of being awake, he copied from an old copy-book of his
young friend Tommy. Before he had formulated any plans for freedom for
himself, he learned the important trick of writing "free passes" for
runaway slaves.

Notwithstanding his progress in gaining knowledge, his considerate
master and kind mistress, his loving companion in Tommy, his good home,
food, and clothes, he was not happy or contented. None of these things
could stifle his yearning to be free. He has aptly described his own
feelings at this time in speaking of Mrs. Auld: "Poor lady, she did not
understand my trouble, and I could not tell her. Nature made us
friends, but slavery made us enemies. She aimed to keep me ignorant,
but I resolved to know, although knowledge only increased my misery.
My feelings were not the result of any marked cruelty in the treatment
I received. It was slavery, not its mere incidents, I hated. Their
feeding and clothing me well could not atone for taking my liberty from
me. The smiles of my master could not remove the deep sorrow that
dwelt in my young bosom. We were both victims of the same
overshadowing evil--she as mistress, I as slave. I will not censure
her too harshly. . . ."

After Douglass learned how to write with tolerable ease, he began to
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