Teaching the Slave to Read.

MUCH has been discussed and written, both at the

North and South, concerning the policy and propriety of permitting those in bondage to gain the rudiments of a common education.

Many who conscientiously (for having lived among them, I do believe that there are "conscientious " slave-owners) hold their laborers in servitude, believe that the experiment might be successfully tried. Indeed, it is often tried on plantations, even in States where the law enforces strict penalties against it. They believe that the slaves, if permitted to learn to road, would be more moral, faithful and obedient; and they cannot reconcile it with their sense of duty to keep from them the perusal of the Bible.

The majority, however, think differently; and the majority will always make the laws. They believe

that there is a talismanic power in even the alphabet of knowledge, to arouse in the bondsman powers which they would crush for ever. They believe that one truth leads on to another, and that the mind, once aroused to inquiry, will never rest until it has found out its native independence of man's dominion. They point triumphantly, in proof of the policy of their system, to the "spoiled slave," as they term many of those in whose training the opposite course has been pursued. More trouble, vexation, and insubordination, they confidently allege, has been caused by permitting slaves to learn to read, than by any other indulgence.

It may be so; it is certain that, in many instances, masters have failed to win the gratitude to which they thought themselves justly entitled, for their kindness and care. They have found their servants growing discontented and idle, where they hoped to make them docile and happy. Searching for the cause of this, they perhaps turn upon the course of training they have followed, and accuse it of being opposed to the best interests of the slave. Could such reasoners but look upon the matter in its true perspective, they would cease to wonder that "good" should, in their view, "work out evil." Learning and Slavery can

never compromise; they are as the antagonistic poles of the magnet.

In the first place, Slavery blunts the mind, and renders it, in its early years, unsusceptible to those impressions which are generally so lasting, when made upon youthful minds. Many who have tried to educate colored children, have been led to accuse the race of natural inferiority in its capacity to gain knowledge. We have no right to draw that inference from the few attempts which have been made on a part of the race whose mental faculties have, through many generations, been crippled by disuse.

I had once under my charge, for a short time, a negro girl, born in Africa-"Margru" of the "Armistad," with whose history most are familiar. On her ancestory hung no clog of depression, except that of native wildness. There was no lack of aptitude to learn in her case. She astonished all by the ease with which she acquired knowledge, particularly in mathematical science. That a native heathen should be a better recipient of knowledge than one brought up in the midst of American civilization, speaks well for "the race," but ill for "the system," which has trained the latter.

Not only is this native dulness to be overcome, but time for study is to be found-time enough for the faculties to unbend from the pressure of labor, and fix themselves upon the mental task. This is what few employers consider themselves able to afford. Once a week, in their opinion, is quite often enough for the slave to repeat his lesson; and through the week he may forget it. No wonder that both the indulgent master and the teacher—yes, and the learner, too, often become discouraged, and give up the task before the Word of God is unlocked to "the poor," for whom it was expressly written!

I speak as one who has felt these obstacles, having, with the approval of one of the class to whom I have alluded, taken charge of a Sunday school among his servants. More attentive and grateful pupils I never had, but it has pained my heart to feel the difficulty of leading them even to the threshold of knowledge; and there leaveing them!

In an adjoining household, however, it was still worse. George, a light-colored "boy" of twenty-five, the "factotum" of his mistress, was the husband of our cook, Letty. I had succeeded in taking Letty

through several chapters in the New Testament, and this had aroused the ambition of George.

"What do you think?" exclaimed one of the family to me, one morning; "Mrs. has been whipping George !"

"Why! for what could that have been? I thought he was a favorite servant !"

"For taking lessons of Letty in the spelling-book!”

It was even so. The poor fellow wanted to learn to stammer in his Testament, and Letty, like any truehearted wife, had given him the little assistance she could render. The whipping failed of its intended effect, however. Going one evening, at a late hour, into Letty's cabin, I found George seated by her on the floor, in the corner of their mud fire-place, poring intently over the forbidden spelling-book! He started up confused, but seeing who it was, he was reassured, and went on with his lesson! Whether George, Letty, or any of those who have gained the rudiments of science, will be more happy in their servitude, is to me exceedingly doubtful. Thus far the severer classes of masters have the right; a slave, to be perfectly contented as a slave, must be in total ignorance. But better, far better, greater suffering, if it bring enlarge