of education, and the advantages of intelligence over ignorance,
and, as far as I dared, I tried to show the agency of ignorance in
keeping men in slavery. Webster's spelling book and the _Columbian
Orator_ were looked into again. As summer came on, and the long Sabbath
days stretched themselves over our idleness, I became uneasy, and wanted
a Sabbath school, in which to exercise my gifts, and to impart the
little knowledge of letters which I possessed, to my brother slaves. A
house was hardly necessary in the summer time; I could hold my school
under the shade of an old oak tree, as well as any where else. The thing
was, to get the scholars, and to have them thoroughly imbued with the
desire to learn. Two such boys were quickly secured, in Henry and John,
and from them the contagion spread. I was not long bringing around
me twenty or thirty young men, who enrolled themselves, gladly, in my
Sabbath school, and were willing to meet me regularly, under the
trees or elsewhere, for the purpose of learning to read. It was{205}
surprising with what ease they provided themselves with spelling
books. These were mostly the cast off books of their young masters or
mistresses. I taught, at first, on our own farm. All were impressed with
the necessity of keeping the matter as private as possible, for the fate
of the St. Michael's attempt was notorious, and fresh in the minds of
all. Our pious masters, at St. Michael's, must not know that a few of
their dusky brothers were learning to read the word of God, lest they
should come down upon us with the lash and chain. We might have met to
drink whisky, to wrestle, fight, and to do other unseemly things, with
no fear of interruption from the saints or sinners of St. Michael's.

But, to meet for the purpose of improving the mind and heart, by
learning to read the sacred scriptures, was esteemed a most dangerous
nuisance, to be instantly stopped. The slaveholders of St. Michael's,
like slaveholders elsewhere, would always prefer to see the slaves
engaged in degrading sports, rather than to see them acting like moral
and accountable beings.

Had any one asked a religious white man, in St. Michael's, twenty years
ago, the names of three men in that town, whose lives were most after
the pattern of our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, the first three would
have been as follows:

GARRISON WEST, _Class Leader_.
WRIGHT FAIRBANKS, _Class Leader_.
THOMAS AULD, _Class Leader_.

And y