come
and go and play in the open sunshine, his early life was typical of the
happier side of the negro life in slavery. What he missed of a
mother's affection and a father's care was partly made up to him by the
indulgent kindness of his good grandmother.

When Fred was between seven and eight years of age his grandmother was
directed by her master to take her grandson to the Lloyd plantation.
After the boy arrived at his new home, he was put in charge of a
slave-woman for whom the only name we know is "Aunt Katy." This change
brought him the first real hardship of his life. As an early
consequence of it, he lost the care and guidance of his grandmother,
his freedom to play, good food, and that affection which means so much
to a child. When he came under the care of Aunt Katy, he began to feel
for the first time the sting of unkindness. He has given a very
disagreeable picture of this foster-mother. She was a woman of a
hateful disposition, and treated the little stranger from Tuckahoe with
extreme harshness. Her special mode of punishment was to deprive him
of food. Indeed he was forced to go hungry most of the time, and if he
complained was beaten without mercy. He has described his misery on
one particular night. After being sent supperless to bed, his
suffering very soon became more than he could bear, and when everybody
else in the cabin was asleep he quietly took some corn and began to
parch it before the open fireplace. While thus trying to appease his
hunger by stealth, and feeling dejected and homesick, "who but my own
dear mother should come in?" The friendless, hungry, and sorrowing
little boy found himself suddenly caught up in her strong and
protecting arms.

"I shall never forget," he says, "the indescribable expression of her
countenance when I told her that Aunt Katy had said that she would
starve the life out of me. There was a deep and tender glance at me,
and a fiery look of indignation for Aunt Katy at the same moment, and
when she took the parched corn from me and gave me, instead, a large
ginger-cake, she read Aunt Katy a lecture which was never forgotten.
That night I learned, as never before, that I was not only a child, but
somebody's child. I was grander on my mother's knee than a king upon
his throne. But my triumph was short. I dropped off to sleep and
waked in the morning to find my mother gone, and myself again at the
mercy of the virago in my master's kitchen."

There i