Chapter 14 - Page 2

bright, descending messengers from the
sky. It was about daybreak when I saw this sublime scene. I was
not without the suggestion, at the moment, that it might be the
harbinger of the coming of the Son of Man; and, in my then state
of mind, I was prepared to hail Him as my friend and deliverer.
I had read, that the "stars shall fall from heaven"; and they
were now falling. I was suffering much in my mind. It did seem
that every time the young tendrils of my affection became
attached, they were rudely broken by some unnatural outside
power; and I was beginning to look away to heaven for the rest
denied me on earth.

But, to my story. It was now more than seven years since I had
lived with Master Thomas Auld, in the family of my old master, on
Col. Lloyd's plantation. We were almost entire strangers to each
other; for, when I knew him at the house of my old master, it was
not as a _master_, but simply as "Captain Auld," who had married
old master's daughter. All my lessons concerning his temper
and disposition, and the best methods of pleasing him, were yet
to be learnt. Slaveholders, however, are not very ceremonious in
approaching a slave; and my ignorance of the new material in
shape of a master was but transient. Nor was my mistress long in
making known her animus. She was not a "Miss Lucretia," traces
of whom I yet remembered, and the more especially, as I saw them
shining in the face of little Amanda, her daughter, now living
under a step-mother's government. I had not forgotten the soft
hand, guided by a tender heart, that bound up with healing balsam
the gash made in my head by Ike, the son of Abel. Thomas and
Rowena, I found to be a well-matched pair. _He_ was stingy, and
_she_ was cruel; and--what was quite natural in such cases--she
possessed the ability to make him as cruel as herself, while she
could easily descend to the level of his meanness. In the house
of Master Thomas, I was made--for the first time in seven years
to feel the pinchings of hunger, and this was not very easy to
bear.

For, in all the changes of Master Hugh's family, there was no
change in the bountifulness with which they supplied me with
food. Not to give a slave enough to eat, is meanness
intensified, and it is so recognized among slaveholders
generally, in Maryland. The rule is, no matter how coarse the
food, only let there be enough of it. This is the theory, and--
in the part of Maryland I came from--the general practice accords
with this theory. Lloyd's plantation was an exception, as was,
also, the house of Master Thomas Auld.

All know the lightness of Indian corn-meal, as an article of
food, and can easily judge from the following facts whether the
statements I have made of the