Step by Step | Page 6

'bout de eyes,-- don't you think so, Massa? Poor
Tidy! she's"--and Annie stopped, and a deep sigh, instead of words,
filled up the sentence, and tears dropped down upon the baby's
forehead. Memory traveled back to that dreadful night when this only
sister had been dragged from her bed, chained with a slave-gang, and
driven off to the dreaded South, never more to be heard from.
WE talk of the "sunny South;"--to the slave, the South is cold, dark,
and cheerless; the land of untold horrors, the grave of hope and joy.
"'Pears as if my poor old mudder," said Annie, brushing away the tears,
"never got up right smart after Tidy went away. She'd had six children
sold from her afore, and she set stores by her and me, 'cause we was
girls, and we was all she had left, too. Tidy was pooty as a flower; and
dat's just what your fadder, Massa Carroll, sold her for. My poor
mudder-- how she cried and took on! but then she grew more settled

like. She said she'd gi'n her up for de good Lord to take care on. She
said, if he could take care of de posies in de woods, he certain sure
would look after her, and so she left off groaning like; but she's never
got over that sad look in her face. 'Oh,' says she to me, says she, 'Annie,
do call dat leetle cretur's name Tidy,-- mebbe 'twill make my poor, sore
heart heal up;' and so I will."
"So I would, Annie; yes, so I would," said the Master soothingly. "So I
would, if 'twill be any comfort to poor old Marcia,--clever old soul she
is. She was my mammy, and I was always fond of her. She has trotted
me on her knee, and toted me about on her back, many an hour. I must
go down to the quarters this very day, and see if she has things
comfortable. She's getting old, and we must do well by her in her old
age. And you, Annie, you mustn't mind those other things. We mustn't
borrow trouble. And we can't help it, you know; and we mustn't cry and
fret for what we can't help. What's the use? It don't do any good, you
see, and only makes a bad matter worse. Must take things as they come,
in this world of ours, Annie;" and the Master thought thus to assuage
the tide of bitter recollection in the breast of his down-trodden
bond-woman, and divert her mind from the painful future before her
and her darling child. In vain. The tears still fell over the brow of the
baby, flowing from the deep fountain of sorrow and tenderness that
springs forth only from a mother's heart.
"Oh, Massa," she ventured timidly to say amid her sobs, "please don't
never part baby and me."
"Be a good girl, Annie," said he, "and mind your work, and don't be
borrowing trouble. We'll take good care of you. You've got a nice baby,
that's a fact,--the smartest little thing on the whole plantation; see how
well you can raise her now."
The fond heart of the trembling mother leaped back again to its
happiness at the praise bestowed upon her baby; and taking up the little
blossom, she laid it with pride upon her bosom, murmuring, "Years of
good times we'll have, sweety, afore sich dark days come,-- mebbe
they'll never come to you and me."

Alas, vain hope! Scarcely a single year had passed, when one day she
came to the cot to look at the little sleeper, and lo, her treasure was
gone! The master had found it convenient, in making a sale of some
field hands, to THROW IN this infant, by way of closing a satisfactory
bargain.
None can tell, but those who have gone through the trying experience,
how hard it is for a mother to part with her child when God calls it
away by death. But oh, how much harder it must be to have a babe torn
away from the maternal arms by the stern hand of oppression, and flung
out on the cruel tide of selfishness and passion! Let us weep, dear
children, for the poor slave mothers who have to endure such wrongs.
I will not undertake to describe the distress of this poor woman when
the knowledge of her loss burst upon her. It was as when the tall tree is
shivered by the lightning's blast. Her strong frame shook and trembled
beneath the shock; her eye rolled and burned in tearless anguish, and
her voice failed her in the intensity of her grief. For hours she was
unable to move. Alone, uncomforted, she lay upon the earth, crushed
beneath the weight of this unexpected calamity.