Chapter 10 - Page 2

inspire me with fear? I therefore soon learned to regard her as
something more akin to a mother, than a slaveholding mistress.
The crouching servility of a slave, usually so acceptable a
quality to the haughty slaveholder, was not understood nor
desired by this gentle woman. So far from deeming it impudent in
a slave to look her straight in the face, as some slaveholding
ladies do, she seemed ever to say, "look up, child; don't be
afraid; see, I am full of kindness and good will toward you."
The hands belonging to Col. Lloyd's sloop, esteemed it a great
privilege to be the bearers of parcels or messages to my new
mistress; for whenever they came, they were sure of a most kind
and pleasant reception. If little Thomas was her son, and her
most dearly beloved child, she, for a time, at least, made me
something like his half-brother in her affections. If dear Tommy
was exalted to a place on his mother's knee, "Feddy" was honored
by a place at his mother's side. Nor did he lack the caressing
strokes of her gentle hand, to convince him that, though
_motherless_, he was not _friendless_. Mrs. Auld was not
only a kind-hearted woman, but she was remarkably pious; frequent
in her attendance of public worship, much given to reading the
bible, and to chanting hymns of praise, when alone. Mr. Hugh
Auld was altogether a different character. He cared very little
about religion, knew more of the world, and was more of the
world, than his wife. He set out, doubtless to be--as the world
goes--a respectable man, and to get on by becoming a successful
ship builder, in that city of ship building. This was his
ambition, and it fully occupied him. I was, of course, of very
little consequence to him, compared with what I was to good Mrs.
Auld; and, when he smiled upon me, as he sometimes did, the smile
was borrowed from his lovely wife, and, like all borrowed light,
was transient, and vanished with the source whence it was
derived. While I must characterize Master Hugh as being a very
sour man, and of forbidding appearance, it is due to him to
acknowledge, that he was never very cruel to me, according to the
notion of cruelty in Maryland. The first year or two which I
spent in his house, he left me almost exclusively to the
management of his wife. She was my law-giver. In hands so
tender as hers, and in the absence of the cruelties of the
plantation, I became, both physically and mentally, much more
sensitive to good and ill treatment; and, perhaps, suffered more
from a frown from my mistress, than I formerly did from a cuff at
the hands of Aunt Katy. Instead of the cold, damp floor of my
old master's kitchen, I found myself on carpets; for the corn bag
in winter, I now had a good straw bed, well furnished with