alkers were at work, I
was told that every white man would leave the ship, in her unfinished
condition, if I struck a blow at my trade upon her. This uncivil,
inhuman, and selfish treatment was not so shocking and scandalous in
my eyes at the time as it now appears to me. Slavery had inured me to
hardships that made ordinary trouble sit lightly upon me. Could I have
worked at my trade I could have earned two dollars a day, but as a
common laborer I received but one dollar. The difference was of great
importance to me, but if I could not get two dollars, I was glad to
get one; and so I went to work for Mr. French as a common laborer. The
consciousness that I was free--no longer a slave--kept me cheerful under
this, and many similar proscriptions, which I was destined to meet
in New Bedford and elsewhere on the free soil of Massachusetts. For
instance, though colored children attended the schools, and were treated
kindly by their teachers, the New Bedford Lyceum refused, till several
years after my residence in that city, to allow any colored person to
attend the lectures delivered in its hall. Not until such men as Charles
Sumner, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horace Mann refused
to lecture in their course while there was such a restriction, was it
abandoned.

Becoming satisfied that I could not rely on my trade in New Bedford to
give me a living, I prepared myself to do any kind of work that came to
hand. I sawed wood, shoveled coal, dug cellars, moved rubbish from back
yards, worked on the wharves, loaded and unloaded vessels, and scoured
their cabins.

I afterward got steady work at the brass-foundry owned by Mr. Richmond.
My duty here was to blow the bellows, swing the crane, and empty the
flasks in which castings were made; and at times this was hot and heavy
work. The articles produced here were mostly for ship work, and in the
busy season the foundry was in operation night and day. I have often
worked two nights and every working day of the week. My foreman, Mr.
Cobb, was a good man, and more than once protected me from abuse that
one or more of the hands was disposed to throw upon me. While in this
situation I had little time for mental improvement. Hard work, night and
day, over a furnace hot enough to keep the metal running like water,
was more favorable to action than thought; yet here I often nailed a
newspaper to the post near my bellows, and read while I was performing
the up and down motion o