t. We were separated, according to the common custom, when I
was but an infant, and, of course, before I knew my mother from any one
else.

The germs of affection with which the Almighty, in his wisdom and mercy,
arms the hopeless infant against the ills and vicissitudes of his lot,
had been directed in their growth toward that loving old grandmother,
whose gentle hand and kind deportment it was in the first effort of my
infantile understanding to comprehend and appreciate. Accordingly,
the tenderest affection which a beneficent Father allows, as a partial
compensation to the mother for the pains and lacerations of her heart,
incident to the maternal relation, was, in my case, diverted from its
true and natural object, by the envious, greedy, and treacherous hand of
slavery. The slave-mother can be spared long enough from{41 MY MOTHER}
the field to endure all the bitterness of a mother's anguish, when it
adds another name to a master's ledger, but _not_ long enough to receive
the joyous reward afforded by the intelligent smiles of her child. I
never think of this terrible interference of slavery with my infantile
affections, and its diverting them from their natural course, without
feelings to which I can give no adequate expression.

I do not remember to have seen my mother at my grandmother's at
any time. I remember her only in her visits to me at Col. Lloyd's
plantation, and in the kitchen of my old master. Her visits to me there
were few in number, brief in duration, and mostly made in the night.
The pains she took, and the toil she endured, to see me, tells me that
a true mother's heart was hers, and that slavery had difficulty in
paralyzing it with unmotherly indifference.

My mother was hired out to a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles
from old master's, and, being a field hand, she seldom had leisure, by
day, for the performance of the journey. The nights and the distance
were both obstacles to her visits. She was obliged to walk, unless
chance flung into her way an opportunity to ride; and the latter was
sometimes her good luck. But she always had to walk one way or the
other. It was a greater luxury than slavery could afford, to allow a
black slave-mother a horse or a mule, upon which to travel twenty-four
miles, when she could walk the distance. Besides, it is deemed a foolish
whim for a slave-mother to manifest concern to see her children, and,
in one point of view, the case is made out--she can do