the coopers'
shop, wheelwrights' shop, blacksmiths' shop, and shoemakers' shop.
Besides the care of these, he often had business for the plantation
which required him to be absent two and three days.

Thus largely employed, he had little time, and perhaps as little
disposition, to interfere with the children individually. What he was to
Col. Lloyd, he made Aunt Katy to him. When he had anything to say or do
about us, it was said or done in a wholesale manner; disposing of us in
classes or sizes, leaving all minor details to Aunt Katy, a person of
whom the reader has already received no very favorable impression. Aunt
Katy was a woman who never allowed herself to act greatly within the
margin of power granted to her, no matter how broad that authority might
be. Ambitious, ill-tempered and cruel, she found in her present position
an ample field for the exercise of her ill-omened qualities. She had a
strong hold on old master she was considered a first rate cook, and she
really was very industrious. She was, therefore, greatly favored by old
master, and as one mark of his favor, she was the only mother who was
permitted to retain her children around her. Even to these children she
was often fiendish in her brutality. She pursued her son Phil, one day,
in{58} my presence, with a huge butcher knife, and dealt a blow with its
edge which left a shocking gash on his arm, near the wrist. For this,
old master did sharply rebuke her, and threatened that if she ever
should do the like again, he would take the skin off her back. Cruel,
however, as Aunt Katy was to her own children, at times she was not
destitute of maternal feeling, as I often had occasion to know, in the
bitter pinches of hunger I had to endure. Differing from the practice
of Col. Lloyd, old master, instead of allowing so much for each slave,
committed the allowance for all to the care of Aunt Katy, to be divided
after cooking it, amongst us. The allowance, consisting of coarse
corn-meal, was not very abundant--indeed, it was very slender; and in
passing through Aunt Katy's hands, it was made more slender still, for
some of us. William, Phil and Jerry were her children, and it is not to
accuse her too severely, to allege that she was often guilty of starving
myself and the other children, while she was literally cramming her own.
Want of food was my chief trouble the first summer at my old master's.
Oysters and clams would do very well, with an occasional supply of