She treated me the way she supposed that one human being treat another. very kindly began to teach me the abcs.
but the her husband found out what she was doing and told her not to teach me anymore. it was against the law to teach a slave to read. he said "A slave should only know how to obey his master, nothing more. If you teach him to read, he will be discontented and unhappy, and he will be of no use as a salve." My mistress then began to obey her husband. She finally became more violent in her opposition to my reading than her husband. but from that moment, I understood the pathway to freedom, to freedom