EFFORTS TO LEARN TO READ AND WRITE.
Thomas, the coachman, and I were fast friends. We used to get together every time we had a chance and talk about freedom. "Oh!" Tom would say, "if I could only write." I remember when Tom first began to take lessons at night from some plasterers, workmen of the neighborhood. They saw that he was so anxious to learn that they promised to teach him every evening if he would slip out to their house. I, too, was eager to learn to read and write, but did not have the opportunity which Tom had of getting out at night. I had to sleep in the house where the folks were, and could not go out without being observed, while Tom had quarters in another part of the establishment, and could slip out unobserved. Tom, however, consoled me by saying that he would teach me as soon as he knew how. So Tom one night put a copy of some figures on the side of the barn for me to practice from. I took the chalk and imitated him as near as I could, but my work was poor beside his, as he had been learning for some months, and could make the figures quite well and write a little. Still I kept trying. Tom encouraging me and telling me that I would learn in time. "Just keep trying," said he. When this first lesson was over, I forgot to rub out the marks on the barn, and the next morning when Old Master Jack, who happened to be at our home just at that time, went out there and saw the copy and my imitation of it, he at once raised great excitement by calling attention to the rude characters and wanting to know who had done that. I was afraid to own that I had done it; but old Master Jack somehow surmised that it was Tom or I, for he said to Boss: "Edmund, you must watch those fellows, Louis and Thomas, if you don't they will get spoilt—spoilt. They are pretty close to town here—here." Tom and I laughed over this a good deal and how easily we slipped out of it, but concluded not to stop trying to learn all we could. Tom always said: "Lou, I am going to be a free man yet, then we will need some education; no, let us never stop trying to learn." Tom was a Virginian, as I was, and was sold from his parents when a mere lad. Boss used to write to his parents (owners) occasionally, that his people might hear from him. The letters were to his mother, but sent in care of the white folks. Tom had progressed very fast in his secret studies, and could write enough to frame a letter. It seems it had been over a year since Boss had written for him, but nothing was said until one morning I heard Boss telling Tom to come to the barn to be whipped. He showed Tom three letters which he had written to his mother, and this so startled him that he said nothing. I listened breathlessly to each word Boss said: "Where did you learn to write?" asked he, "and when did you learn? How long have you been writing to your mother?" At that moment he produced the three letters which Tom had written. Boss, it seems, had mistrusted something, and spoke to the postmaster, telling him to stop any letters which Tom might mail for Virginia to his mother. The postmaster did as directed, for slaves had no rights which postmasters were bound to respect; hence, the letters fell into the master's hands instead of going to their destination. Tom, not hearing from his first letter, wrote a second, then a third, never dreaming that they had been intercepted. Boss raged and Tom was severely whipped. After this nothing Tom did pleased any of the family—it was a continual pick on him. Everything was wrong with both of us, for they were equally hard on me. They mistrusted, I think, that I could write; yet I could not find out just what they did think.