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.