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.