She either thought it unnecessary, or she lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It is due, however, to my mistress to say, that she did not adopt this course in all its stringency at the first. 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. My mistress-who, as the reader has already seen, had begun to teach me was suddenly checked in her benevolent design, by the strong advice of her husband. In attaining this knowledge, I was compelled to resort to indirections by no means congenial to my nature, and which were really humiliating to me. The most interesting feature of my history here, was my learning to read and write, under somewhat marked disadvantages. I lived in the family of Master Hugh, at Baltimore, seven years, during which time-as the almanac makers say of the weather-my condition was variable.
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