extreme harshness. Her special mode of punishment was to deprive him
of food. Indeed he was forced to go hungry most of the time, and if he
complained was beaten without mercy. He has described his misery on
one particular night. After being sent supperless to bed, his
suffering very soon became more than he could bear, and when everybody
else in the cabin was asleep he quietly took some corn and began to
parch it before the open fireplace. While thus trying to appease his
hunger by stealth, and feeling dejected and homesick, "who but my own
dear mother should come in?" The friendless, hungry, and sorrowing
little boy found himself suddenly caught up in her strong and
protecting arms.

"I shall never forget," he says, "the indescribable expression of her
countenance when I told her that Aunt Katy had said that she would
starve the life out of me. There was a deep and tender glance at me,
and a fiery look of indignation for Aunt Katy at the same moment, and
when she took the parched corn from me and gave me, instead, a large
ginger-cake, she read Aunt Katy a lecture which was never forgotten.
That night I learned, as never before, that I was not only a child, but
somebody's child. I was grander on my mother's knee than a king upon
his throne. But my triumph was short. I dropped off to sleep and
waked in the morning to find my mother gone, and myself again at the
mercy of the virago in my master's kitchen."

There is no record of another meeting between mother and son. She
probably died shortly afterward, because if she had been within walking
distance, he certainly would have seen her again. Her memory in his
child's mind was always that of a real and near personality. When he
became older, and conscious of his superiority to his fellows, he was
wont to say: "I am proud to attribute my love of letters, such as I may