Yet it was knowledge quite worth possessing.

I could not have been more than seven or eight years old, when I began to make this subject my study.

It was with me in the woods and fields; along the shore of the river, and wherever my boyish wanderings led me; and though I was, at that time,{71 EARLY REFLECTIONS ON SLAVERY} quite ignorant of the existence of the free states, I distinctly remember being, _even then_, most strongly impressed with the idea of being a freeman some day.

This cheering assurance was an inborn dream of my human nature a constant menace to slavery--and one which all the powers of slavery were unable to silence or extinguish.
Up to the time of the brutal flogging of my Aunt Esther--for she was my own aunt--and the horrid plight in which I had seen my cousin from Tuckahoe, who had been so badly beaten by the cruel Mr.Plummer, my attention had not been called, especially, to the gross features of slavery.

I had, of course, heard of whippings and of savage _rencontres_ between overseers and slaves, but I had always been out of the way at the times and places of their occurrence.