and their ideas, so far
as they had ideas to be adopted. The equality of nature is strongly
asserted in childhood, and childhood requires children for associates.
_Color_ makes no difference with a child. Are you a child with wants,
tastes and pursuits common to children, not put on, but natural? then,
were you black as ebony you would be welcome to the child of alabaster
whiteness. The law of compensation holds here, as well as elsewhere.
Mas' Daniel could not associate with ignorance without sharing its
shade; and he could not give his black playmates his company, without
giving them his intelligence, as well. Without knowing{60} this, or
caring about it, at the time, I, for some cause or other, spent much of
my time with Mas' Daniel, in preference to spending it with most of the
other boys.

Mas' Daniel was the youngest son of Col. Lloyd; his older brothers
were Edward and Murray--both grown up, and fine looking men. Edward was
especially esteemed by the children, and by me among the rest; not that
he ever said anything to us or for us, which could be called especially
kind; it was enough for us, that he never looked nor acted scornfully
toward us. There were also three sisters, all married; one to Edward
Winder; a second to Edward Nicholson; a third to Mr. Lownes.

The family of old master consisted of two sons, Andrew and Richard; his
daughter, Lucretia, and her newly married husband, Capt. Auld. This
was the house family. The kitchen family consisted of Aunt Katy, Aunt
Esther, and ten or a dozen children, most of them older than myself.
Capt. Anthony was not considered a rich slaveholder, but was pretty well
off in the world. He owned about thirty _"head"_ of slaves, and three
farms in Tuckahoe. The most valuable part of his property was his
slaves, of whom he could afford to sell one every year. This crop,
therefore, brought him seven or eight hundred dollars a year, besides
his yearly salary, and other revenue from his farms.

The idea of rank and station was rigidly maintained on Col. Lloyd's
plantation. Our family never visited the great house, and the Lloyds
never came to our home. Equal non-intercourse was observed between Capt.
Anthony's family and that of Mr. Sevier, the overseer.

Such, kind reader, was the community, and such the place, in which my
earliest and most lasting impressions of slavery, and of slave-life,
were received; of which impressions you will learn more in the coming
chapters of thi