eisure, I might get a word or two of wisdom from them."

Think of that, boys and girls of the twentieth century, with your day
schools and evening schools, libraries, colleges, and
universities,--picking reading material from the gutter and mastering
it by stealth! Yet this boy grew up to be the friend and co-worker of
Garrison and Phillips, the eloquent spokesman of his race, the honored
guest of distinguished peers and commoners of England, one of the
noblest examples of a self-made man that the world has ever seen.

Under equal hardships he learned to write. The boy's wits, sharpened
instead of blunted by repression, saw opportunities where more favored
children could see none. He gave himself his first writing lesson in
his master's shipyard, by copying from the various pieces of timber the
letters with which they had been marked by the carpenters, to show the
different parts of the ship for which they were intended. He copied
from posters on fences, from old copy books, from anything and
everything he could get hold of. He practiced his new art on pavements
and rails, and entered into contests in letter making with white boys,
in order to add to his knowledge. "With playmates for my teachers," he
says, "fences and pavements for my copy books, and chalk for my pen and
ink, I learned to write."

While being "broken in" to field labor under the lash of the overseer,
chained and imprisoned for the crime of attempting to escape from
slavery, the spirit of the youth never quailed. He believed in himself,
in his God-given powers, and he was determined to use them in freeing
himself and his race.

How well he succeeded in the stupendous task to which he set himself
while yet groping in the black night of bondage, with no human power
outside of his own indomitable will to help him, his life work attests
in language more enduring than "storied urn" or written history. A roll
call of the world's great moral heroes would be incomplete without the
name of the slave-born Douglass, who came on the stage of life to play
the leading role of the Moses of his race in one of the saddest and, at
the same time, most glorious eras of American history.

He was born in Talbot County, Maryland. The exact date of his birth is
not known; but he himself thought it was in February, 1817. He died in
Washington, D.C., February 20, 1895.

"TO THE FIRST ROBIN"

The air was keen and biting, and traces of snow still lingered on the
gr