or spelt correctly, or not; if it only looks beautiful, they say he has as good an education as any white man—­he can write as well as any white man, etc.  The poor, ignorant creature, hearing this, he is ashamed, forever after, to let any person see him humbling himself to another for knowledge but going about trying to deceive those who are more ignorant than himself, he at last falls an ignorant victim to death in wretchedness.  I pray that the Lord may undeceive my ignorant brethren, and permit them to throw away pretensions, and seek after the substance of learning.  I would crawl on my hands and knees through mud and mire, to the feet of a learned man, where I would sit and humbly supplicate him to instil into me, that which neither devils nor tyrants could remove, only with my life—­for the Africans to acquire learning in this country, makes tyrants quake and tremble on their sandy foundation.  Why what is the matter?  Why, they know that their infernal deeds of cruelty will be made known to the world.  Do you suppose one man of good sense and learning would submit himself, his father, mother, wife and children, to be slaves to a wretched man like himself, who, instead of compensating him for his labours, chains, handcuffs and beats him and family almost to death, leaving life enough in them, however, to work for, and call him master?  No! no! he would cut his devilish throat from ear to ear, and well do slaveholders know it.  The bare name of educating the coloured people, scares our cruel oppressors almost to death.  But if they do not have enough to be frightened for yet, it will be, because they can always keep us ignorant, and because God approbates their cruelties, with which they have been for centuries murdering us.  The whites shall have enough of the blacks, yet, as true as God sits on his throne in heaven.

Some of our brethren are so very full of learning that you cannot mention any thing to them which they do not know better than yourself!!—­nothing is strange to them!!—­they knew every thing years ago!—­if any thing should be mentioned in company where they are, immaterial how important it is respecting us or the world, if they had not divulged it; they make light of it, and affect to have known it long before it was mentioned, and try to make all in the room, or wherever you may be, believe that your conversation is nothing—­not worth hearing!!  All this is the result of ignorance and ill-breeding; for a man of good breeding, sense, and penetration, if he had heard a subject told twenty times over and should happen to be in company where one should commence telling it again, he would wait with patience on its narrator, and see if he would tell it as it was told in his presence before—­paying the most strict attention to what is said, to see if any more light will be thrown on the subject; for all men are not gifted alike in telling, or even hearing the most simple narration.  These ignorant, vicious, and wretched men, contribute almost as much injury