"douglass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Frederick)

the daughter of Isaac and Betsey Bailey, both col-
ored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker
complexion than either my grandmother or grand-
father.

My father was a white man. He was admitted to
be such by all I ever heard speak of my parentage.
The opinion was also whispered that my master was
my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I
know nothing; the means of knowing was withheld
from me. My mother and I were separated when I
was but an infant--before I knew her as my mother.
It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland
from which I ran away, to part children from their
mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the
child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is
taken from it, and hired out on some farm a con-
siderable distance off, and the child is placed under
the care of an old woman, too old for field labor.
For what this separation is done, I do not know,
unless it be to hinder the development of the child's
affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy
the natural affection of the mother for the child.
This is the inevitable result.

I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more
than four or five times in my life; and each of these
times was very short in duration, and at night. She
was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve
miles from my home. She made her journeys to see
me in the night, travelling the whole distance on
foot, after the performance of her day's work. She
was a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of
not being in the field at sunrise, unless a slave has
special permission from his or her master to the con-
trary--a permission which they seldom get, and one
that gives to him that gives it the proud name of
being a kind master. I do not recollect of ever seeing
my mother by the light of day. She was with me in
the night. She would lie down with me, and get me
to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very
little communication ever took place between us.
Death soon ended what little we could have while
she lived, and with it her hardships and suffering.
She died when I was about seven years old, on one
of my master's farms, near Lee's Mill. I was not al-
lowed to be present during her illness, at her death,
or burial. She was gone long before I knew any thing
about it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable
extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watch-