To take care of this baby was my first duty. Burwell gave birth to a daughter, a sweet, black-eyed baby, my earliest and fondest pet. While living at Hampton Sidney College, Prince Edward County, Va., Mrs. Burwell, was somewhat unsettled in his business affairs, and while I was yet an infant he made several removals. I presume that I must have been four years old when I first began to remember at least, I cannot now recall anything occurring previous to this period. As I glance over the crowded sea of the past, these incidents stand forth prominently, the guide-posts of memory. From such a wilderness of events it is difficult to make a selection, but as I am not writing altogether the history of myself, I will confine my story to the most important incidents which I believe influenced the moulding of my character. As I cannot condense, I must omit many strange passages in my history. Every day seems like a romance within itself, and the years grow into ponderous volumes. Hour after hour I sit while the scenes are being shifted and as I gaze upon the panorama of the past, I realize how crowded with incidents my life has been. The visions are so terribly distinct that I almost imagine them to be real.

I am now on the shady side of forty, and as I sit alone in my room the brain is busy, and a rapidly moving panorama brings scene after scene before me, some pleasant and others sad and when I thus greet old familiar faces, I often find myself wondering if I am not living the past over again. My recollections of childhood are distinct, perhaps for the reason that many stirring incidents are associated with that period. My birthplace was Dinwiddie Court-House, in Virginia. I was born a slave-was the child of slave parents-therefore I came upon the earth free in God-like thought, but fettered in action.

Elizabeth keckley thirty years a slave