It is enough to say, of my
warm-hearted little play fellows, that they lived on Philpot
street, very near Durgin & Bailey's shipyard.
Although slavery was a delicate subject, and very cautiously
talked about among grown up people in Maryland, I frequently
talked about it--and that very freely--with the white boys. I
<122>would, sometimes, say to them, while seated on a curb stone
or a cellar door, "I wish I could be free, as you will be when
you get to be men." "You will be free, you know, as soon as you
are twenty-one, and can go where you like, but I am a slave for
life. Have I not as good a right to be free as you have?" Words
like these, I observed, always troubled them; and I had no small
satisfaction in wringing from the boys, occasionally, that fresh
and bitter condemnation of slavery, that springs from nature,
unseared and unperverted. Of all consciences let me have those
to deal with which have not been bewildered by the cares of life.
I do not remember ever to have met with a _boy_, while I was in
slavery, who defended the slave system; but I have often had boys
to console me, with the hope that something would yet occur, by
which I might be made free.
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