Secondly, I have no occasion to
do so. Thirdly, I do not know the way; but, Finally, I do not like to be
addressed in this manner, as an overseer of a Southern plantation
addresses a slave. I am not a slave. I am a Massachusetts freeman." This
way of speaking to people, dear Aunty, must be discountenanced. It will,
by and by, beget an aptitude for servile obedience; the eye and ear
becoming accustomed to the forms of domination, we shall have yokes and
chains upon us before we are aware. Some one says, "Let me write the
songs for a nation, and I care not who makes her laws." So say I, Let me
write imperative advertisements on fences and buildings, and all
resistance to Southern encroachments and usurpation will soon be in
vain.
But to resume my narrative. I began to look round, as soon as my
excitement about the runaway horse would allow, for some one to whom I
could open my overburdened mind on the subject of freedom. I espied a
man with an immense load of chairs, from a factory in our neighborhood,
as I supposed, on his way to Boston. Four horses drew the load, which I
saw was very heavy; not so heavy, I thought with myself, as that which
four millions of my fellow-men are this moment laboring with, over the
gloomy hills of darkness in our Southern States.
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