ied to Mr. French
for work. He, generous man that he was, told me he would employ me, and
I might go at once to the vessel. I obeyed him, but upon reaching the
float-stage, where others [sic] calkers were at work, I was told that
every white man would leave the ship, in her unfinished condition, if I
struck a blow at my trade upon her. This uncivil, inhuman, and selfish
treatment was not so shocking and scandalous in my eyes at the time as it
now appears to me. Slavery had inured me to hardships that made ordinary
trouble sit lightly upon me. Could I have worked at my trade I could
have earned two dollars a day, but as a common laborer I received but one
dollar. The difference was of great importance to me, but if I could not
get two dollars, I was glad to get one; and so I went to work for Mr.
French as a common laborer. The consciousness that I was free--no longer
a slave--kept me cheerful under this, and many similar proscriptions,
which I was destined to meet in New Bedford and elsewhere on the free
soil of Massachusetts. For instance, though colored children attended
the schools, and were treated kindly by their teachers, the New Bedford
Lyceum refused, till several years after my residence in that city, to
allow any colored person to attend the lectures delivered in its hall.
Not until such men as Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, and Horace Mann refused to lecture in their course while there
was such a restriction, was it abandoned.

Becoming satisfied that I could not rely on my trade in New Bedford to
give me a living, I prepared myself to do any kind of work that came to
hand. I sawed wood, shoveled coal, dug cellars, moved rubbish from back
yards, worked on the wharves, loaded and unloaded vessels, and scoured
their cabins.

I afterward got steady work at the brass-foundry owned by Mr. Richmond.
My duty here was to blow the bellows, swing the crane, and empty the
flasks in which castings were made; and at times this was hot and heavy
work. The articles produced here were mostly for ship work, and in the
busy season the foundry was in operation night and day. I have often
worked two nights and every working day of the week. My foreman, Mr.
Cobb, was a good man, and more than once protected me from abuse that one
or more of the hands was disposed to throw upon me. While in this
situation I had little time for mental improvement. Hard work, night and
day, over a furnace hot eno