My knowledge of my mother is very scanty, but very distinct.

Her personal appearance and bearing are ineffaceably stamped upon my memory.

She was tall, and finely proportioned; of deep black, glossy complexion; had regular features, and, among the other slaves, was remarkably sedate in her manners.

There is in _Prichard's Natural History of Man_, the head of a figure--on page 157--the features of which so resemble those of my mother, that I often recur to it with something of the feeling which I suppose others experience when looking upon the pictures of dear departed ones.
Yet I cannot say that I was very deeply attached to my mother; certainly not so deeply as I should have been had our relations in childhood been different.

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.