hand found to do, he did with his might; even
while conscious that he was wronged out of his daily earnings, he
worked, and worked hard. At his daily labor he went with a will; with
keen, well set eye, brawny chest, lithe figure, and fair sweep of arm,
he would have been king among calkers, had that been his mission.

It must not be overlooked, in this glance at his education, that{8} Mr.
Douglass lacked one aid to which so many men of mark have been deeply
indebted--he had neither a mother's care, nor a mother's culture, save
that which slavery grudgingly meted out to him. Bitter nurse! may not
even her features relax with human feeling, when she gazes at
such offspring! How susceptible he was to the kindly influences of
mother-culture, may be gathered from his own words, on page 57: "It
has been a life-long standing grief to me, that I know so little of my
mother, and that I was so early separated from her. The counsels of
her love must have been beneficial to me. The side view of her face is
imaged on my memory, and I take few steps in life, without feeling her
presence; but the image is mute, and I have no striking words of hers
treasured up."

From the depths of chattel slavery in Maryland, our author escaped into
the caste-slavery of the north, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Here he
found oppression assuming another, and hardly less bitter, form; of
that very handicraft which the greed of slavery had taught him, his
half-freedom denied him the exercise for an honest living; he found
himself one of a class--free colored men--whose position he has
described in the following words:

"Aliens are we in our native land. The fundamental principles of
the republic, to which the humblest white man, whether born here or
elsewhere, may appeal with confidence, in the hope of awakening a
favorable response, are held to be inapplicable to us. The glorious
doctrines of your revolutionary fathers, and the more glorious teachings
of the Son of God, are construed and applied against us. We are
literally scourged beyond the beneficent range of both authorities,
human and divine. * * * * American humanity hates us, scorns us, disowns
and denies, in a thousand ways, our very personality. The outspread wing
of American christianity, apparently broad enough to give shelter to a
perishing world, refuses to cover us. To us, its bones are brass, and
its features iron. In running thither for shelter and{9} succor, we
have only fled from