The bond-woman lives as a slave, and
is left to die as a beast; often with fewer attentions than are
paid to a favorite horse. Scenes of sacred tenderness, around
the death-bed, never forgotten, and which often arrest the
vicious and confirm the virtuous during life, must be looked for
among the free, though they sometimes occur among the slaves. It
has been a life-long, standing grief to me, that I knew so little
of my mother; and that I was so early separated from her. The
counsels of her love must have been beneficial to me. The side
view of her face is imaged on my memory, and I take few steps in
life, without feeling her presence; but the image is mute, and I
have no striking words of her's treasured up.
I learned, after my mother's death, that she could read, and that
she was the _only_ one of all the slaves and colored people in
Tuckahoe who enjoyed that advantage. How she acquired this
knowledge, I know not, for Tuckahoe is the last place in the
world where she would be apt to find facilities for learning. I
can, therefore, fondly and proudly ascribe to her an earnest love
of knowledge.
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