kitchen door and asked
the privilege of bringing in and putting away this coal. "What will you
charge?" said the lady. "I will leave that to you, madam." "You may put
it away," she said. I was not long in accomplishing the job, when the
dear lady put into my hand TWO SILVER HALF-DOLLARS. To understand the
emotion which swelled my heart as I clasped this money, realizing that I
had no master who could take it from me,--THAT IT WAS MINE--THAT MY HANDS
WERE MY OWN, and could earn more of the precious coin,--one must have
been in some sense himself a slave. My next job was stowing a sloop at
Uncle Gid. Howland's wharf with a cargo of oil for New York. I was not
only a freeman, but a free working-man, and no "master" stood ready at
the end of the week to seize my hard earnings.

The season was growing late and work was plenty. Ships were being fitted
out for whaling, and much wood was used in storing them. The sawing this
wood was considered a good job. With the help of old Friend Johnson
(blessings on his memory) I got a saw and "buck," and went at it. When I
went into a store to buy a cord with which to brace up my saw in the
frame, I asked for a "fip's" worth of cord. The man behind the counter
looked rather sharply at me, and said with equal sharpness, "You don't
belong about here." I was alarmed, and thought I had betrayed myself. A
fip in Maryland was six and a quarter cents, called fourpence in
Massachusetts. But no harm came from the "fi'penny-bit" blunder, and I
confidently and cheerfully went to work with my saw and buck. It was new
business to me, but I never did better work, or more of it, in the same
space of time on the plantation for Covey, the negro-breaker, than I did
for myself in these earliest years of my freedom.

Notwithstanding the just and humane sentiment of New Bedford three and
forty years ago, the place was not entirely free from race and color
prejudice. The good influence of the Roaches, Rodmans, Arnolds,
Grinnells, and Robesons did not pervade all classes of its people. The
test of the real civilization of the community came when I applied for
work at my trade, and then my repulse was emphatic and decisive. It so
happened that Mr. Rodney French, a wealthy and enterprising citizen,
distinguished as an anti-slavery man, was fitting out a vessel for a
whaling voyage, upon which there was a heavy job of calking and coppering
to be done. I had some skill in both branches, and appl