he
coarsest kind, consisting for the most part of cornmeal mush, which
often finds it way from the wooden tray to his mouth in an oyster shell.
His days, when the weather is warm, are spent in the pure, open air, and
in the bright sunshine. He always sleeps in airy apartments; he seldom
has to take powders, or to be paid to swallow pretty little sugar-coated
pills, to cleanse his blood, or to quicken his appetite. He eats no
candies; gets no lumps of loaf sugar; always relishes his food; cries
but little, for nobody cares for his crying; learns to esteem his
bruises but slight, because others so esteem them. In a word, he is, for
the most part of the first eight years of his life, a spirited, joyous,
uproarious, and happy boy, upon whom troubles fall only like water on a
duck's back. And such a boy, so far as I can now remember, was the boy
whose life in slavery I am now narrating.

CHAPTER II. _Removed from My First Home_

THE NAME "OLD MASTER" A TERROR--COLONEL LLOYD'S PLANTATION--WYE
RIVER--WHENCE ITS NAME--POSITION OF THE LLOYDS--HOME ATTRACTION--MEET
OFFERING--JOURNEY FROM TUCKAHOE TO WYE RIVER--SCENE ON REACHING OLD
MASTER'S--DEPARTURE OF GRANDMOTHER--STRANGE MEETING OF SISTERS AND
BROTHERS--REFUSAL TO BE COMFORTED--SWEET SLEEP.

That mysterious individual referred to in the first chapter as an object
of terror among the inhabitants of our little cabin, under the ominous
title of "old master," was really a man of some consequence. He owned
several farms in Tuckahoe; was the chief clerk and butler on the home
plantation of Col. Edward Lloyd; had overseers on his own farms; and
gave directions to overseers on the farms belonging to Col. Lloyd.
This plantation is situated on Wye river--the river receiving its name,
doubtless, from Wales, where the Lloyds originated. They (the Lloyds)
are an old and honored family in Maryland, exceedingly wealthy. The home
plantation, where they have resided, perhaps for a century or more, is
one of the largest, most fertile, and best appointed, in the state.

About this plantation, and about that queer old master--who must be
something more than a man, and something worse than an angel--the reader
will easily imagine that I was not only curious, but eager, to know all
that could be known. Unhappily for me, however, all the information
I could get concerning him increased my great dread of being carried
thither--of being{34} separated from and deprived of the protection of