My mother calls me her good boy,
      My father calls me brave;
    What wicked action have I done,
      That I should be a slave?

    I saw my little sister sold,
      So will they do to me;
    My heavenly Father, let me die,
      For then I shall be free.

So talking to himself he fell into a doze, and dreamed about his mother.  He thought her large serious eyes were looking into his, and her long black hair falling over his face.  His mother was part Indian and part white, with only just enough of the black to make her hair a little curly.  It don’t make much difference what color people are in the slave states.  If the mothers are slaves the children are slaves too, even if they are nine-tenths white.

From this pleasant dream Lewis was roused by a splash of cold water, and Aunt Sally, with her head out of the window, was calling, “Here you lazy nigger! come here and grind this coffee for me.”  And the little boy awoke to find himself a friendless orphan, in a cold world with a cruel master.

The next morning Lewis was playing about the yard with as good a will as any of the young negroes.  Children’s troubles don’t last long, and to see him turning somersets, singing Jim Crow, and kicking up a row generally, you would suppose he had forgotten all about the lost primer and his mother too.

He was in the greatest possible glee in the afternoon, at being sent with another boy, Jim, to carry a package to Mr. Pond’s.  Then he was trusted, so he put himself on his dignity, and did not turn more than twenty somersets on the way.  In coming back, as they had no package to carry, they took it into their heads to cut across lots, though it was no nearer than the road.  Still it made them plenty of exercise in climbing fences and walking log bridges across the brooks.  While doing this they came in sight of some white pond-lilies, and all at once it occurred to Lewis that it would be right nice to get some of them for Miss Katy, to buy up her good-will, for he was afraid she would be very angry when she found that he had lost the primer.  So he waded and paddled about till he had collected quite a handful of them, in spite of Jim’s hurrying up, and telling him that he would get his head broke, for missus had told them to be quick.

When he had gathered a large handful he started on the run for home, stopping only once or twice to admire the fragrant, lovely flowers; and he felt their beauty quite as much, I dare say, as Miss Katy would.

When they were passing the quarters, as the place is called where the huts of the slaves are built, Aunt Sally put her head out of the cabin door, and seeing him, she called out, “Here, Lew, here’s your mother.”

The boy forgot his lilies, dropped them, and running to the door, he saw within a strange woman sitting on a bench.  Was that his mother?  She turned her large dark eyes for a moment upon him, and then she sprang to meet him.  His little heart was ready to overflow with tears of joy, and he expected to be overwhelmed with caresses, just as you would if you should meet your mother after being separated from her more than a year.