JCB Excavator Hydradig 110W T4F Sevices Manual

JCB Excavator Hydradig 110W T4F

Sevices Manual
To download the complete and correct content, please visit:

https://manualpost.com/download/jcb-excavator-hydradig-110w-t4f-sevices-manua
l/

JCB Excavator Hydradig 110W T4F Sevices Manual Size: 339 MB Fomat: PDF
Language: English Brand: JCB Type of machine: Excavator Hydradig 110W T4F
Type of document: Sevices Manual Model: 9813-8250 Page of number: 1578 Date
modifided: From: 2496001 To: 2496750
Download all on: manualpost.com.

Visit ManualPost.com to get correct and complete item

 [Unrelated content]
Another random document on
Internet:
the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish that I had never seen.
Turning over the picture of the ark with too much haste, I unhappily
made a breach in its ingenious fabric, driving my inconsiderate
fingers right through the two larger quadrupeds,—the elephant and
the camel,—that stare (as well they might) out of the last two
windows next the steerage in that unique piece of naval
architecture. The book was henceforth locked up, and became an
interdicted treasure. With the book, the objections and solutions
gradually cleared out of my head, and have seldom returned since in
any force to trouble me.
But there was one impression which I had imbibed from Stackhouse,
which no lock or bar could shut out, and which was destined to try
my childish nerves rather more seriously. That detestable picture!
I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors,—the night-time, solitude,
and the dark. I never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from the
fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life,—so far as memory
serves in things so long ago,—without an assurance, which realized
its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful spectre. Be old
Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say that, to his picture of the
Witch raising up Samuel, (O that old man covered with a mantle!) I
owe, not my midnight terrors, the horror of my infancy, but the
shape and manner of their visitation. It was he who dressed up for
me a hag that nightly sat upon my pillow,—a sure bedfellow, when
my aunt or my maid was far from me. All day long, while the book
was permitted me, I dreamed waking over his delineation, and at
night (if I may use so bold an expression) awoke into sleep, and
found the vision true. I durst not, even in the daylight, once enter
the chamber where I slept, without my face turned to the window,
aversely from the bed, where my witch-ridden pillow was. Parents do
not know what they do when they leave tender babes alone to go to
sleep in the dark. The feeling about for a friendly arm, the hoping
for a familiar voice when they awake screaming, and find none to
soothe them,—what a terrible shaking it is to their poor nerves! The
keeping them up till midnight, through candlelight and the
unwholesome hours, as they are called, would, I am satisfied, in a
medical point of view, prove the better caution. That detestable
picture, as I have said, gave the fashion to my dreams,—if dreams
they were,—for the scene of them was invariably the room in which
I lay.
The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End, or Mackarel End, as it
is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire, a
farm-house, delightfully situated within a gentle walk from
Wheathampstead. I can just remember having been there, on a visit
to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of my sister,
who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish
that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences,
that we might share them in equal division. But that is impossible.
The house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial
yeoman, who had married my grandmother's sister. His name was
Gladman. More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak
of; and, for the greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of
the other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons inherited
Mackery End,—kindred or strange folk,—we were afraid almost to
conjecture, but determined some day to explore.
We made an excursion to this place a few summers ago. By a
somewhat circuitous route, taking the noble park at Luton in our
way from Saint Alban's, we arrived at the spot of our anxious
curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farm-house, though every
trace of it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a
pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year. For though I
had forgotten it, we had never forgotten being there together, and
we had been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till memory on
my part became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought I
knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, O how unlike it
was to that which I had conjured up so many times instead of it!
Still the air breathed balmily about it; the season was in the "heart
of June," and I could say with the poet,—
 But thou, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation!

Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some few miles
out of my road to look upon the remains of an old great house with
which I had been impressed in infancy. I was apprised that the
owner of it had lately pulled it down; still I had a vague notion that it
could not all have perished, that so much solidity with magnificence
could not have been crushed all at once into the mere dust and
rubbish which I found it.
The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand, indeed, and the
demolition of a few weeks had reduced it to—an antiquity.
I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. Where had stood
the great gates? What bounded the court-yard? Whereabout did the
outhouses begin? A few bricks only lay as representatives of that
which was so stately and so spacious.
Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of
destruction, I should have cried out to them to spare a plank at least
out of the cheerful storeroom, in whose hot window-seat I used to
sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and the hum and
flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about me,—
it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns; or a panel of the
yellow-room.
Why, every plank and panel of that house for me had magic in it!
The tapestried bedrooms,—tapestry so much better than painting,—
not adorning merely, but peopling, the wainscots, at which childhood
ever and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as
quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a momentary eye-
encounter with those stern bright visages, staring back in return.
Then, that haunted room in which old Mrs. Brattle died, whereinto I
have crept, but always in the daytime, with a passion of fear; and a
sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold communication with the
past. How shall they build it up again?
It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but that
traces of the splendor of past inmates were everywhere apparent.
Its furniture was still standing, even to the tarnished gilt leather
battledores and crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery,
which told that children had once played there. But I was a lonely
child, and had the range at will of every apartment, knew every
nook and corner, wondered and worshipped everywhere.
The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of thought, as it
is the feeder of love, and silence, and admiration. So strange a
passion for the place possessed me in those years, that though there
lay—I shame to say how few roods distant from the mansion,—half
hid by trees, what I judged some romantic lake, such was the spell
which bound me to the house, and such my carefulness not to pass
its strict and proper precincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored for
me; and not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder devotion, I
found, to my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook had been the
unknown lake of my infancy. Variegated views, extensive prospects,
—and those at no great distance from the house,—I was told of
such,—what were they to me, being out of the boundaries of my
Eden? So far from a wish to roam, I would have drawn, methought,
still closer the fences of my chosen prison, and have been hemmed
in by a yet securer cincture of those excluding garden walls. I could
have exclaimed with that garden-loving poet,—

"Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines;

Curl me about, ye gadding vines;
And O, so close your circles lace,
That I may never leave this place!
But, lest your fetters prove too weak,
Ere I your silken bondage break,
Do you, O brambles! chain me too,
And, courteous briers, nail me through."
I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides,—the low-built roof,
—parlors ten feet by ten,—frugal boards, and all the homeliness of
home,—these were the condition of my birth, the wholesome soil
which I was planted in. Yet, without impeachment to their tenderest
lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of something beyond;
and to have taken, if but a peep, in childhood, at the contrasting
accidents of a great fortune.

HUGH MILLER,
SCOTTISH GEOLOGIST AND AUTHOR.

I was born on the tenth day of October, 1802, in the low, long
house built by my great-grandfather.
My memory awoke early. I have recollections which date several
months before the completion of my third year; but, like those of the
golden age of the world, they are chiefly of a mythologic character.
I retain a vivid recollection of the joy which used to light up the
household on my fathers arrival; and how I learned to distinguish for
myself his sloop when in the offing, by the two slim stripes of white
that ran along her sides and her two square topsails.
I have my golden memories, too, of splendid toys that he used to
bring home with him,—among the rest, of a magnificent four-
wheeled wagon of painted tin, drawn by four wooden horses and a
string; and of getting it into a quiet corner, immediately on its being
delivered over to me, and there breaking up every wheel and horse,
and the vehicle itself, into their original bits, until not two of the
pieces were left sticking together. Further, I still remember my
disappointment at not finding something curious within at least the
horses and the wheels; and as unquestionably the main enjoyment
derivable from such things is to be had in the breaking of them, I
sometimes wonder that our ingenious toymen do not fall upon the
way of at once extending their trade, and adding to its philosophy,
by putting some of their most brilliant things where nature puts the
nut-kernel,—inside.
Then followed a dreary season, on which I still look back in memory
as on a prospect which, sunshiny and sparkling for a time, has
become suddenly enveloped in cloud and storm. I remember my
mother's long fits of weeping, and the general gloom of the widowed
household; and how, after she had sent my two little sisters to bed,
and her hands were set free for the evening, she used to sit up late
at night, engaged as a seamstress, in making pieces of dress for
such of the neighbors as chose to employ her.

I remember I used to wander disconsolately about the harbor at this

season, to examine the vessels which had come in during the night;
and that I oftener than once set my mother a-crying by asking her
why the shipmates who, when my father was alive, used to stroke
my head, and slip halfpence into my pockets, never now took any
notice of me, or gave me anything. She well knew that the
shipmasters—not an ungenerous class of men—had simply failed to
recognize their old comrade's child; but the question was only too
suggestive, notwithstanding, of both her own loss and mine. I used,
too, to climb, day after day, a grassy knoll immediately behind my
mother's house, that commands a wide reach of the Moray Frith,
and look wistfully out, long after every one else had ceased to hope,
for the sloop with the two stripes of white and the two square
topsails. But months and years passed by, and the white stripes and
the square topsails I never saw.
I had been sent, previous to my father's death, to a dame's school.
During my sixth year I spelled my way, under the dame, through the
Shorter Catechism, the Proverbs, and the New Testament, and then
entered upon her highest form, as a member of the Bible class; but
all the while the process of acquiring learning had been a dark one,
which I slowly mastered, with humble confidence in the awful
wisdom of the schoolmistress, not knowing whither it tended, when
at once my mind awoke to the meaning of the most delightful of all
narratives,—the story of Joseph. Was there ever such a discovery
made before? I actually found out for myself, that the art of reading
is the art of finding stories in books; and from that moment reading
became one of the most delightful of my amusements.
I began by getting into a corner on the dismissal of the school, and
there conning over to myself the new-found story of Joseph nor did
one perusal serve; the other Scripture stories followed,—in especial,
the story of Samson and the Philistines, of David and Goliah, of the
prophets Elijah and Elisha; and after these came the New Testament
stories and parables.
Assisted by my uncles, too, I began to collect a library in a box of
birch-bark about nine inches square, which I found quite large
enough to contain a great many immortal works,—"Jack the Giant-
Killer," and "Jack and the Bean-Stalk," and the "Yellow Dwarf," and
"Bluebeard," and "Sinbad the Sailor," and "Beauty and the Beast,"
and "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," with several others of
resembling character.
Old Homer wrote admirably for little folks, especially in the Odyssey;
a copy of which, in the only true translation extant,—for, judging
from its surpassing interest and the wrath of critics, such I hold that
of Pope to be,—I found in the house of a neighbor. Next came the
Iliad; not, however, in a complete copy, but represented by four of
the six volumes of Bernard Lintot. With what power, and at how
early an age, true genius impresses! I saw, even at this immature
period, that no other writer could cast a javelin with half the force of
Homer. The missiles went whizzing athwart his pages; and I could
see the momentary gleam of the steel ere it buried itself deep in
brass and bull-hide.
I next succeeded in discovering for myself a child's book, of not less
interest than even the Iliad, which might, I was told, be read on
Sabbaths, in a magnificent old edition of the "Pilgrim's Progress,"
printed on coarse whity-brown paper, and charged with numerous
woodcuts, each of which occupied an entire page, that, on principles
of economy, bore letter-press on the other side. And such delightful
prints as they are! It must have been some such volume that sat for
its portrait to Wordsworth, and which he so exquisitely describes as

"Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts,

Strange and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire,
Sharp-knee'd, sharp-elbow'd, and lean-ankled too,
With long and ghastly shanks,—forms which, once
seen,
Could never be forgotten."

I quitted the dame's school at the end of the first twelvemonth, after
mastering that grand acquirement of my life,—the art of holding
converse with books; and was transferred to the grammar school of
the parish, at which there attended at the time about a hundred and
twenty boys, with a class of about thirty individuals more, much
looked down upon by the others, and not deemed greatly worth the
counting, seeing that it consisted only of lassies.
One morning, having the master's English rendering of the day's
task well fixed in my memory, and no book of amusement to read, I
began gossiping with my nearest class-fellow, a very tall boy, who
ultimately shot up into a lad of six feet four, and who on most
occasions sat beside me, as lowest in the form save one. I told him
about the tall Wallace and his exploits; and so effectually succeeded
in awakening his curiosity, that I had to communicate to him, from
beginning to end, every adventure recorded by the blind minstrel.
My story-telling vocation once fairly ascertained, there was, I found,
no stopping in my course. I had to tell all the stories I had ever
heard or read. The demand on the part of my class-fellows was
great and urgent; and, setting myself to try my ability of original
production, I began to dole out to them long extempore biographies,
which proved wonderfully popular and successful. My heroes were
usually warriors like Wallace, and voyagers like Gulliver, and dwellers
in desolate islands like Robinson Crusoe; and they had not
unfrequently to seek shelter in huge deserted castles, abounding in
trap-doors and secret passages, like that of Udolpho. And finally,
after much destruction of giants and wild beasts, and frightful
encounters with magicians and savages, they almost invariably
succeeded in disentombing hidden treasures to an enormous
amount, or in laying open gold mines, and then passed a luxurious
old age, like that of Sinbad the Sailor, at peace with all mankind, in
the midst of confectionery and fruits.
With all my carelessness, I continued to be a sort of favorite with the
master; and when at the general English lesson, he used to address
to me little quiet speeches, vouchsafed to no other pupil, indicative
of a certain literary ground common to us, on which the others had
not entered. "That, sir," he has said, after the class had just perused,
in the school collection, a "Tatler" or "Spectator,"—"that, sir, is a
good paper; it's an Addison"; or, "That's one of Steele's, sir"; and on
finding in my copy-book, on one occasion, a page filled with rhymes,
which I had headed "Poem on Peace," he brought it to his desk,
and, after reading it carefully over, called me up, and with his closed
penknife, which served as a pointer, in one hand, and the copy-book
brought down to the level of my eyes in the other, began his
criticism. "That's bad grammar, sir," he said, resting the knife-handle
on one of the lines; "and here's an ill-spelled word; and there's
another; and you have not at all attended to the punctuation; but
the general sense of the piece is good,—very good, indeed, sir." And
then he added, with a grim smile, "Care, sir, is, I dare say, as you
remark, a very bad thing; but you may safely bestow a little more of
it on your spelling and your grammar."

WALTER SCOTT,
POET, HISTORIAN, AND NOVELIST OF SCOTLAND.
I t was at Sandy Knowe, at the home of my father's father, that I
had the first knowledge of life; and I recollected distinctly that my
situation and appearance were a little whimsical. I was lame, and
among the old remedies for lameness some one had recommended
that, as often as a sheep was killed for the use of the family, I
should be stripped and wrapped up in the warm skin as it was taken
from the carcass of the animal. In this Tartar-like dress I well
remember lying upon the floor of the little parlor of the farm-house,
while my grandfather, an old man with snowy hair, tried to make me
crawl. And I remember a relation of ours, Colonel MacDougal,
joining with him to excite and amuse me. I recollect his old military
dress, his small cocked hat, deeply laced, embroidered scarlet
waistcoat, light-colored coat, and milk-white locks, as he knelt on the
ground before me, and dragged his watch along the carpet to make
me follow it. This must have happened about my third year, for both
the old men died soon after. My grandmother continued for some
years to take charge of the farm, assisted by my uncle Thomas
Scott. This was during the American war, and I remember being as
anxious on my uncle's weekly visits (for we had no news at another
time) to hear of the defeat of Washington, as if I had some personal
cause for hating him. I got a strange prejudice in favor of the Stuart
family from the songs and tales I heard about them. One or two of
my own relations had been put to death after the battle of Culloden,
and the husband of one of my aunts used to tell me that he was
present at their execution. My grandmother used to tell me many a
tale of Border chiefs, like Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood,
Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead. My kind aunt, Miss Janet Scott,
whose memory will always be dear to me, used to read to me with
great patience until I could repeat long passages by heart. I learned
the old ballad of Hardyknute, to the great annoyance of our almost
only visitor, Dr. Duncan, the worthy clergyman of the parish, who
had no patience to have his sober chat disturbed by my shouting for
this ditty. Methinks I see now his tall, emaciated figure, legs cased in
clasped gambadoes, and his very long face, and hear him exclaim,
"One might as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as where that
child is!"
I was in my fourth year when my father was told that the waters of
Bath might be of some advantage to my lameness. My kind aunt,
though so retiring in habits as to make such a journey anything but
pleasure or amusement, undertook to go with me to the wells, as
readily as if she expected all the delight the prospect of a watering-
place held out to its most impatient visitors. My health was by this
time a good deal better from the country air at my grandmother's.
When the day was fine, I was carried out and laid beside the old
shepherd among the crags and rocks, around which he fed his
sheep. Childish impatience inclined me to struggle with my
lameness, and I began by degrees to stand, walk, and even run.
I lived at Bath a year without much advantage to my lameness. The
beauties of the Parade, with the river Avon winding around it, and
the lowing of the cattle from the opposite hills, are warm in my
recollection, and are only exceeded by the splendors of a toy-shop
near the orange grove. I was afraid of the statues in the old abbey
church, and looked with horror upon the image of Jacob's ladder
with its angels.

My mother joined to a light and happy temper of mind a strong turn

for poetry and works of imagination. She was sincerely devout, but
her religion, as became her sex, was of a cast less severe than my
father's. My hours of leisure from school study were spent in reading
with her Pope's translation of Homer, which, with a few ballads and
the songs of Allan Ramsay, was the first poetry I possessed. My
acquaintance with English literature gradually extended itself. In the
intervals of my school-hours I read with avidity such books of history
or poetry or voyages and travels as chance presented, not forgetting
fairy-tales and Eastern stories and romances. I found in my mother's
dressing-room (where I slept at one time) some odd volumes of
Shakespeare, nor can I forget the rapture with which I sat up in my
shirt reading them by the firelight.
In my thirteenth year I first became acquainted with Bishop Percy's
"Reliques of Ancient Poetry." As I had been from infancy devoted to
legendary lore of this nature, and only reluctantly withdrew my
attention, from the scarcity of materials and the rudeness of those
which I possessed, it may be imagined, but cannot be described,
with what delight I saw pieces of the same kind which had amused
my childhood, and still continued in secret the Delilahs of my
imagination, considered as the subject of sober research, grave
commentary, and apt illustration, by an editor who showed his
poetical genius was capable of emulating the best qualities of what
his pious labor preserved. I remember well the spot where I read
these volumes for the first time. It was beneath a huge platanus-
tree, in the ruins of what had been intended for an old-fashioned
arbor in the garden adjoining the house. The summer day sped
onward so fast that, notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I
forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was
found still entranced in my intellectual banquet. To read and to
remember was in this instance the same thing, and henceforth I
overwhelmed my schoolfellows, and all who would hearken to me,
with tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first
time, too, I could scrape a few shillings together, which were not
common occurrences with me, I bought unto myself a copy of these
beloved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so
frequently or with half the enthusiasm.
To this period also I can trace distinctly the awaking of that
delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects which has never
since deserted me. The neighborhood of Kelso, the most beautiful, if
not the most romantic, village in Scotland, is eminently calculated to
awaken these ideas. It presents objects, not only grand in
themselves, but venerable from their association. The meeting of
two superb rivers, the Tweed and the Teviot, both renowned in
song; the ruins of an ancient abbey; the more distant vestiges of
Roxburgh Castle; the modern mansion of Fleurs, which is so situated
as to combine the ideas of ancient baronial grandeur with those of
modern taste,—are in themselves objects of the first class; yet are
so mixed, united, and melted among a thousand other beauties of a
less prominent description, that they harmonize into one general
picture, and please rather by unison than by concord.

FREDERIC DOUGLASS,
THE SLAVE-BOY OF MARYLAND, NOW ONE OF THE ABLEST CITIZENS AND MOST
ELOQUENT ORATORS OF THE UNITED STATES.

I was born in what is called Tuckahoe, on the eastern shore of

Maryland, a worn-out, desolate, sandy region. Decay and ruin
are everywhere visible, and the thin population of the place
would have quitted it long ago, but for the Choptauk River, which
runs through, from which they take abundance of shad and herring,
and plenty of fever and ague. My first experience of life began in the
family of my grandparents. The house was built of logs, clay, and
straw. A few rough fence-rails thrown loosely over the rafters
answered the purpose of floors, ceilings, and bedsteads. It was a
long time before I learned that this house was not my grandparents',
but belonged to a mysterious personage who was spoken of as "Old
Master"; nay, that my grandmother and her children and
grandchildren, myself among them, all belonged to this dreadful
personage, who would only suffer me to live a few years with my
grandmother, and when I was big enough would carry me off to
work on his plantation.
The absolute power of this distant Old Master had touched my
young spirit with but the point of its cold cruel iron, yet it left me
something to brood over. The thought of being separated from my
grandmother, seldom or never to see her again, haunted me. I
dreaded the idea of going to live with that strange Old Master whose
name I never heard mentioned with affection, but always with fear.
My grandmother! my grandmother! and the little hut and the joyous
circle under her care, but especially she, who made us sorry when
she left us but for an hour, and glad on her return,—how could we
leave her and the good old home!
But the sorrows of childhood, like the pleasures of after-life, are
transient. The first seven or eight years of the slave-boy's life are as
full of content as those of the most favored white children of the
slaveholder. The slave-boy escapes many troubles which vex his
white brother. He is never lectured for improprieties of behavior. He
is never chided for handling his little knife and fork improperly or
awkwardly, for he uses none. He is never scolded for soiling the
table-cloth, for he takes his meals on the clay floor. He never has the
misfortune, in his games or sports, of soiling or tearing his clothes,
for he has almost none to soil or tear. He is never expected to act
like a nice little gentleman, for he is only a rude little slave.
Thus, freed from all restraint, the slave-boy can be, in his life and
conduct, a genuine boy, doing whatever his boyish nature suggests;
enacting, by turns, all the strange antics and freaks of horses, dogs,
pigs, and barn-door fowls, without in any manner compromising his
dignity or incurring reproach of any sort. He literally runs wild; has
no pretty little verses to learn in the nursery; no nice little speeches
to make for aunts, uncles, or cousins, to show how smart he is; and,
if he can only manage to keep out of the way of the heavy feet and
fists of the older slave-boys, he may trot on, in his joyous and
roguish tricks, as happy as any little heathen under the palm-trees of
Africa.
To be sure, he is occasionally reminded, when he stumbles in the
way of his master,—and this he early learns to avoid,—that he is
eating his white bread, and that he will be made to see sights by
and by. The threat is soon forgotten, the shadow soon passes, and
our sable boy continues to roll in the dust, or play in the mud, as
best suits him, and in the veriest freedom. If he feels uncomfortable,
from mud or from dust, the coast is clear; he can plunge into the
river or the pond, without the ceremony of undressing or the fear of
wetting his clothes; his little tow-linen shirt—for that is all he has on
—is easily dried; and it needed washing as much as did his skin. His
food is of the coarsest kind, consisting for the most part of corn-
meal mush, which often finds its way from the wooden tray to his
mouth in an oyster-shell. His days, when the weather is warm, are
spent in the pure, open air and in the bright sunshine. He eats no
candies; gets no lumps of loaf-sugar; always relishes his food; cries
but little, for nobody cares for his crying; learns to esteem his
bruises but slight, because others so think them.
In a word, he is, for the most part of the first eight years of his life,
a spirited, joyous, uproarious, and happy boy, upon whom troubles
fall only like water on a duck's back. And such a boy, so far as I can
now remember, was the boy whose life in slavery I am now telling.
I gradually learned that the plantation of Old Master was on the river
Wye, twelve miles from Tuckahoe. About this place and about that
queer Old Master, who must be something more than man and
something worse than an angel, I was eager to know all that could
be known. Unhappily, all that I found out only increased my dread of
being carried thither. The fact is, such was my dread of leaving the
little cabin, that I wished to remain little forever; for I knew, the
taller I grew, the shorter my stay. The old cabin, with its rail floor
and rail bedsteads up stairs, and its clay floor down stairs, and its
dirt chimney and windowless sides, and that most curious piece of
workmanship of all the rest, the ladder stairway, and the hole
curiously dug in front of the fireplace, beneath which grandmammy
placed the sweet potatoes to keep them from the frost, was MY HOME,
—the only home I ever had; and I loved it, and all connected with it.
The old fences around it, and the stumps in the edge of the woods
near it, and the squirrels that ran, skipped, and played upon them,
were objects of interest and affection. There, too, right at the side of
the hut, stood the old well, with its stately and skyward-pointing
beam, so aptly placed between the limbs of what had once been a
tree, and so nicely balanced, that I could move it up and down with
only one hand, and could get a drink myself without calling for help.
Where else in the world could such a well be found, and where could
such another home be met with? Down in a little valley, not far from
grandmamma's cabin, stood a mill, where the people came often, in
large numbers, to get their corn ground. It was a water-mill; and I
never shall be able to tell the many things thought and felt while I
sat on the bank and watched that mill, and the turning of its
ponderous wheel. The mill-pond, too, had its charms; and with my
pin-hook and thread line I could get nibbles, if I could catch no fish.
But, in all my sports and plays, and in spite of them, there would,
occasionally, come the painful foreboding that I was not long to
remain there, and that I must soon be called away to the home of
Old Master.
I was A SLAVE,—born a slave; and though the fact was strange to me,
it conveyed to my mind a sense of my entire dependence on the will
of somebody I had never seen; and, from some cause or other, I
had been made to fear this Somebody above all else on earth. Born
for another's benefit, as the firstling of the cabin flock I was soon to
be selected as a meet offering to the fearful and inexorable Old
Master, whose huge image on so many occasions haunted my
childhood's imagination. When the time of my departure was
decided upon, my grandmother, knowing my fears, and in pity for
them, kindly kept me ignorant of the dreaded event about to
happen. Up to the morning (a beautiful summer morning) when we
were to start, and, indeed, during the whole journey,—a journey
which, child as I was, I remember as well as if it were yesterday,—
she kept the sad fact hidden from me. This reserve was necessary,
for, could I have known all, I should have given grandmother some
trouble in getting me started. As it was, I was helpless, and she—
dear woman!—led me along by the hand, resisting, with the reserve
and solemnity of a priestess, all my inquiring looks to the last.
The distance from Tuckahoe to Wye River, where Old Master lived,
was full twelve miles, and the walk was quite a severe test of the
endurance of my young legs. The journey would have proved too
hard for me, but that my dear old grandmother—blessings on her
memory!—afforded occasional relief by "toting" me on her shoulder.
My grandmother, though old in years,—as was evident from more
than one gray hair, which peeped from between the ample and
graceful folds of her newly-ironed bandanna turban,—was
marvellously straight in figure, elastic, and muscular. I seemed
hardly to be a burden to her. She would have "toted" me farther, but
that I felt myself too much of a man to allow it, and insisted on
walking. Releasing dear grandmamma from carrying me did not
make me altogether independent of her, when we happened to pass
through portions of the sombre woods which lay between Tuckahoe
and Wye River. She often found me increasing the energy of my grip,
and holding her clothing, lest something should come out of the
woods and eat me up. Several old logs and stumps imposed upon
me, and got themselves taken for wild beasts. I could see their legs,
eyes, and ears till I got close enough to them to know that the eyes
were knots, washed white with rain, and the legs were broken
boughs, and the ears only fungous growths on the bark.
As the day went on the heat grew; and it was not until the afternoon
that we reached the much-dreaded end of the journey. I found
myself in the midst of a group of children of many colors,—black,
brown, copper-colored, and nearly white. I had not seen so many
children before. Great houses loomed up in different directions, and
a great many men and women were at work in the fields. All this
hurry, noise, and singing was very different from the stillness of
Tuckahoe. As a new-comer, I was an object of special interest; and,
after laughing and yelling around me, and playing all sorts of wild
tricks, the children asked me to go out and play with them. This I
refused to do, preferring to stay with grandmamma. I could not help
feeling that our being there boded no good to me. Grandmamma
looked sad. She was soon to lose another object of affection, as she
had lost many before. I knew she was unhappy, and the shadow fell
on me, though I knew not the cause.
All suspense, however, must have an end, and the end of mine was
at hand. Affectionately patting me on the head, and telling me to be
a good boy, grandmamma bade me to go and play with the little
children. "They are kin to you," said she; "go and play with them."
Among a number of cousins were Phil, Tom, Steve, and Jerry, Nance
and Betty.
Grandmother pointed out my brother and sisters who stood in the
group. I had never seen brother nor sisters before; and though I had
sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really
did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were
brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached
to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters we were by blood, but
slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words "brother" and
"sisters," and knew they must mean something; but slavery had
robbed these terms of their true meaning. The experience through
which I was passing, they had passed through before. They had
already learned the mysteries of Old Master's home, and they
seemed to look upon me with a certain degree of compassion; but
my heart clave to my grandmother. Think it not strange that so little
sympathy of feeling existed between us. The conditions of brotherly
and sisterly feeling were wanting; we had never nestled and played
together. My poor mother, like many other slave-women, had many
children, but NO FAMILY! The domestic hearth, with its holy lessons
and precious endearments, is abolished in the case of a slave-
mother and her children. "Little children, love one another," are
words seldom heard in a slave-cabin.
I really wanted to play with my brother and sisters, but they were
strangers to me, and I was full of fear that grandmother might leave
without taking me with her. Entreated to do so, however, and that,
too, by my dear grandmother, I went to the back part of the house,
to play with them and the other children. Play, however, I did not,
but stood with my back against the wall, witnessing the mirth of the
others. At last, while standing there, one of the children, who had
been in the kitchen, ran up to me, in a sort of roguish glee,
exclaiming, "Fed, Fed! grandmammy gone! grandmammy gone!" I
could not believe it; yet, fearing the worst, I ran into the kitchen, to
see for myself, and found it even so. Grandmamma had indeed
gone, and was now far away, clean out of sight. I need not tell all
that happened now. Almost heartbroken at the discovery, I fell upon
the ground, and wept a boy's bitter tears, refusing to be comforted.

CHARLES DICKENS,
FIRST NOVELIST OF THE PERIOD.

I
have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of
children assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas
tree.