In faithful compliance with this advice, the good lady had not only ceased to instruct me, herself, but had set her face as a flint against my learning to read by any means.

It is due, however, to my mistress to say, that she did not adopt this course in all its stringency at the first.

She either thought it unnecessary, or she lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in{119} mental darkness.

It was, at least, necessary for her to have some training, and some hardening, in the exercise of the slaveholder's prerogative, to make her equal to forgetting my human nature and character, and to treating me as a thing destitute of a moral or an intellectual nature.

Mrs.Auld--my mistress--was, as I have said, a most kind and tender-hearted woman; and, in the humanity of her heart, and the simplicity of her mind, she set out, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another.
It is easy to see, that, in entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, some little experience is needed.