"Your toil in the hot sun with your load, my dear sir," said I, "is well
fitted to impress you with the thought of the miseries under which four
millions of your fellow-men are every day groaning in our Southern
country. I make no doubt that you are grateful for the blessings of
freedom which we enjoy here at the North. I wish to ask whether you are
doing anything against oppression; whether you belong to any Association
whose object is"--
"What on airth did you stop me for," said he, quite impatiently, and
yet with a lingering gleam of respect, and with some hesitancy at any
further rudeness of speech.
"My dear sir," said I, "four millions of Southern slaves are this very
hour groaning under sorrows which no tongue"--
"You"--(he hesitated a moment, and surveyed me from head to foot, and
then broke out,)--"putty-headed, white-birch-looking, nateral--stoppin'
a load right near the crown of a hill, no gully in the road, such a day
as this, and--'Ged ehp,'"--said he to his horses, as the stones under
the wheels that moment began to give way; and then he drew his lash
through one hand, with a most angry look. I really thought that I should
have to feel that lash.
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