" So they made game of me with the help of
the Classics, giving poignancy to their jokes by polishing the tips with
classical allusions. While I was under the "delusion," they sung
snatches of Bruce's Address to his army; and when they came to the words
"Who so base as be a slave?--
Let him turn and flee,"
one of them ran a cane under the delusion and punched me with it,
keeping stroke to the music. This was little short of profaneness. They
asked me if the chair-maker's harnesses were probably made by free or
slave labor, alluding, unfeelingly, to a mistake which I made in a
recitation one day, when two of those very students had kept me talking
about slavery up to the very moment when the recitation-bell rang, so
that I had not looked at my lesson. There are men in my class, and
these were some of them, who, I am told, are plotting to prevent my
having the first appointment, to which they know that my marks at
recitation entitle me. But may I never be so prejudiced against those
who differ from me on the subject of slavery as to deny them credit for
things which they have fairly earned. I leave this to the avowed enemies
of human rights. For the cause of the slave, I must gain the first
appointment.
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