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 the slaveholder's{31 COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS} child cared for and petted.

The spirit of the All Just mercifully holds the balance for the young.
The slaveholder, having nothing to fear from impotent childhood, easily affords to refrain from cruel inflictions; and if cold and hunger do not pierce the tender frame, the first seven or eight years of the slave-boy's life are about as full of sweet content as those of the most favored and petted _white_ children of the slaveholder.