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LIFE AND TIMFS OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

347

the division of the property of my old master Mr. Aaron Anthony, my grandmother had fallen to him and that he had left her in her old age when she could be no longer of service to him to pick up her living in solitude with none to help her or in other words had turned her out to die like an old horse. "Ah!" he said "that was a mistake I never owned your grandmother; she in the division of the slaves was awarded to my brother-in-law Andrew Anthony; but," he added quickly "I brought her down here and took care of her as long as she lived." The fact is that after writing my narrative describing the condition of my grandmother Capt. Aulds attention being thus called to it he rescued her from her destitution. I told him that this mistake or mine was corrected as soon as I discovered it and that I had at no time any wish to do him injustice; that I regarded both of us as victims of a system. "Oh I never liked slavery" he said, "and I meant to emancipate all of my slaves when they reached the age of twenty-five years." I told him I had always been curious to know how old I was that it had been a serious trouble to me not to know when was my birthday. He said he could not tell me that but he thought I was born in February, 1818. This date made me one year younger than I had supposed myself from what was told me by Mistress Lucretia, Captain Auld's former wife when I left Lloyds for Baltimore in the Spring of 1825: she having then said that I was eight going on nine. I know that it was in the year 1825 that I went to Baltimore, because it was in that year that Mr. James Beacham built a large frigate at the foot of Aliceanna street, for one of the South American Governments. Judging from this and from certain e,ents which transpired at Col. Lloyds. such as a boy without any knowledge of books under eight years old would hardly take cognizance of, I am led to believe that Mrs. Lucretia was nearer right as to my age than her husband.

Before I left his bedside Captain Auld spoke with a cheerful confidence of the great change that awaited him, and felt himself about to depart in peace. Seeing his extreme weakness I did not protract my visit. The whole interview did not last more than twenty minutes and we parted to meet no more. His death was soon after announced in the papers and the fact that he had once owned me as a slave was cited as rendering that event notworthy.

It may not perhaps be quite artistic to speak in this connection of another incident of something of the same nature as that which I have just narrated and yet it quite naturally finds place here; and that is my visit to the town of Eastern county seat of Talbot County two years later to deliver an address in the Court House, for the benefit of some association in that

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