He felt so secure in
her kindness that he had the boldness to ask her to teach him.
Following her natural impulse to do kindness to others, and without,
for a moment, thinking of the danger, she at once consented. He
quickly learned the alphabet and in a short time could spell words of
three syllables. But alas, for his young ambition! When Mr. Auld
discovered what his wife had done, he was both surprised and pained.
He at once stopped the perilous practice, but it was too late. The
precocious young slave had acquired a taste for book learning. He
quickly understood that these mysterious characters called letters were
the keys to a vast empire from which he was separated by an enforced
ignorance. In discussing the matter with his wife, Mr. Auld said: "If
you teach him to read, he will want to know how to write, and with this
accomplished, he will be running away with himself." Mr. Douglass,
referring to this conversation in later years, said: "This was
decidedly the first anti-slavery speech to which I had ever listened.
From that moment, I understood the direct pathway from slavery to
freedom."
During the subsequent six years that he lived in Baltimore in the home
of Mr.
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