1 My fellow-apprentices very soon began to feel it degrading to them to work with me.
2 I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart.
3 We now began to feel a degree of safety, and to prepare ourselves for the duties and responsibilities of a life of freedom.
4 I began, with the commencement of the year, to prepare myself for a final struggle, which should decide my fate one way or the other.
5 But, by this time, I began to want to live upon free land as well as with Freeland; and I was no longer content, therefore, to live with him or any other slaveholder.
6 It is said to have been drawn, several years before the present anti-slavery agitation began, by a northern Methodist preacher, who, while residing at the south, had an opportunity to see slaveholding morals, manners, and piety, with his own eyes.
7 They began to put on airs, and talk about the "niggers" taking the country, saying we all ought to be killed; and, being encouraged by the journeymen, they commenced making my condition as hard as they could, by hectoring me around, and sometimes striking me.