s wife had done, he was both surprised and pained.
He at once stopped the perilous practice, but it was too late. The
precocious young slave had acquired a taste for book learning. He
quickly understood that these mysterious characters called letters were
the keys to a vast empire from which he was separated by an enforced
ignorance. In discussing the matter with his wife, Mr. Auld said: "If
you teach him to read, he will want to know how to write, and with this
accomplished, he will be running away with himself." Mr. Douglass,
referring to this conversation in later years, said: "This was
decidedly the first anti-slavery speech to which I had ever listened.
From that moment, I understood the direct pathway from slavery to
freedom."

During the subsequent six years that he lived in Baltimore in the home
of Mr. Auld he was more closely watched than he had been before this
incident, and his liberty to go and come was considerably curtailed.
He declares that he was not allowed to be alone, when this could be
helped, lest he would attempt to teach himself. But these were unwise
precautions, since they but whetted his appetite for learning and
incited him to many secret schemes to elude the vigilance of his master
and mistress. Everything now contributed to his enlightenment and
prepared him for that freedom for which he thirsted. His occasional
contact with free colored people, his visit to the wharves where he
could watch the vessels going and coming, and his chance acquaintance
with white boys on the street, all became a part of his education and
were made to serve his plans. He got hold of a blue-back speller and
carried it with him all the time. He would ask his little white
friends in the street how to spell certain words and the meaning of
them. In this way he soon learned to read. The first and most
important book owned by him was called the "Columbian Orator." He
bought it with money secretly earned by blacking boots on the street.
It contained selected passages from such great orators as Lord Chatham,
William Pitt Fox, and Sheridan. These speeches were steeped in the
sentiments of liberty, and were full of references to the "rights of
man." They gave to young Douglass a larger idea of liberty than was
included in his mere dream of freedom for himself, and in addition they
increased his vocabulary of words and phrases. The reading of this
book unfitted him longer for restraint. He became all ears and