alled by grandmother, with every mark of reverence, "Old Master." Thus
early did clouds and shadows begin to fall upon my path. Once on the
track--troubles never come singly--I was not long in finding out another
fact, still more grievous to my childish heart. I was told that this
"old master," whose name seemed ever to be mentioned with fear and
shuddering, only allowed the children to live with grandmother for a
limited time, and that in fact as soon{30} as they were big enough, they
were promptly taken away, to live with the said "old master." These
were distressing revelations indeed; and though I was quite too young
to comprehend the full import of the intelligence, and mostly spent my
childhood days in gleesome sports with the other children, a shade of
disquiet rested upon me.

The absolute power of this distant "old master" had touched my young
spirit with but the point of its cold, cruel iron, and left me something
to brood over after the play and in moments of repose. Grandmammy was,
indeed, at that time, all the world to me; and the thought of being
separated from her, in any considerable time, was more than an unwelcome
intruder. It was intolerable.

Children have their sorrows as well as men and women; and it would be
well to remember this in our dealings with them. SLAVE-children _are_
children, and prove no exceptions to the general rule. The liability
to be separated from my grandmother, seldom or never to see her again,
haunted me. I dreaded the thought of going to live with that mysterious
"old master," whose name I never heard mentioned with affection, but
always with fear. I look back to this as among the heaviest of my
childhood's sorrows. My grandmother! my grandmother! and the little hut,
and the joyous circle under her care, but especially _she_, who made
us sorry when she left us but for an hour, and glad on her return,--how
could I leave her and the good old home?

But the sorrows of childhood, like the pleasures of after life,
are transient. It is not even within the power of slavery to write
_indelible_ sorrow, at a single dash, over the heart of a child.

_The tear down childhood's cheek that flows,
Is like the dew-drop on the rose--
When next the summer breeze comes by,
And waves the bush--the flower is dry_.

There is, after all, but little difference in the measure of contentment
felt by the slave-child neglected and t