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February 19 - March 2, 2022
Her thin, cold hand was lying on his; her eyes, large and blue, shone with a singular and spiritual radiance.
when folks have been sick so long, dey has to die to make folks believe anything ails 'em!"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Aunt Nesbit, in that tone which generally means I don't care. "All
You see, Miss Nina, when money goes, in this part of the country, everything goes with it; and when a family is not rich enough to have everything in itself, it goes down very soon."
He who is intellectual reads and studies; he who is industrious flies to business; he who is affectionate seeks friends; he who is pious, religion; but he who is none of these—what has he but his whiskey?
Yes; I wish we knew more about heaven, so that it would seem natural and home-like to us, as this world does.
"Do you know," said Nina, half checking her horse, suddenly, "that I never had the least idea that these men were alive that we read about in these histories, or that they had any feelings like ours? We always studied the lessons, and learnt the hard names, and how forty thousand were killed on one side, and fifty thousand on the other; and we don't
"But how strange it is," said Nina, "to think that all those folks we read about are alive now, doing something somewhere; and I get to wondering where they are—Xerxes, and Alexander, and the rest of them. Why, they were so full of life they kept everything in commotion while in this world; and I wonder if they have been keeping a going ever since.
I hate reading, and I don't intend to have my mind formed; so that nobody need trouble themselves to mark out courses for me! What is it to me what all these old empires have been, a hundred years ago? It is as much as I can do to attend to what is going on now."
"People always talk," said Nina, reddening, "as if there was but one kind of vanity and folly in the world. I think there can be as much learned vanity and folly as we girls have!"
"you'd have to make the history into a romance."
thesis statment
"Oh, law!" said Nina. "We used to write compositions about that, and I've got it all by heart—how it raises false expectations, and leads people to pursue phantoms, rainbows, and meteors, and all that sort of thing!"
she not wrong? You need decontextualize an atrocity to see it as such.
"Well, Harry," said Nina, "I'll sell everything I've got—my jewels—everything. I'll mortgage the plantation, before Tom Gordon shall do this thing! I'm not quite so selfish as I've always seemed to be. I know you've made the sacrifice of body and soul to my interest; and I've always taken it because I loved my ease, and was a spoiled child. But, after all, I know I've as much energy as Tom has, when I am roused, and I'll go over this very morning and make an offer for her. Only you be off. You can't stand such provocation as you get here; and if you yield, as any man will do, at last, then
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Nina gave her orders with a dignity as if she had been a princess, and in all his agitation Harry could not help marvelling at the sudden air of womanliness which had come over her.
We are the people that are never to do wrong! People may stick pins in us, and stick knives in us, wipe their shoes on us, spit in our face—we must be amiable! we must be models of Christian patience! I tell you, your father should rather have put me into quarters and made me work like a field-negro, than to have given me the education he did, and leave me under the foot of every white man that dares tread on me!" Nina remembered to have seen her father in transports of passion, and was again shocked and startled to see the resemblance between his face and the convulsed face before her.
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Did you ever see such a direful place? What is the reason, when we get down south, here, everything seems to be going to destruction, so? I noticed it all the way down through Virginia. It seems as if everything had stopped growing, and was going backwards.
the fall of the south
Instinct may be a greater matter than we think; yet it isn't infallible, any more than our senses.
and he is the more valuable because he has been religiously brought up.
I know a lot of this book is a critique on religious shortcomings but i forgot that christianity was also a mean put in put place to control opposition. Teach a black man to be a christian and he wont object to his wrongful enslavement (why its the lords wish)
it's all hypocrisy, this religious instruction, as you call it!"
they put it in strong in the catechisms about the rights of the master. You see the instruction is just grounded on this, that the master stands in God's place to them."
"It's a worse lie, because it's told to bewilder a simple, ignorant, confiding creature.
But I think they fall into the same error that the Jesuits did when they adulterated Christianity with idolatry in order to get admission in Japan. A lie never works well in religion, nor in morals."
You begin to let people think, and they won't stop where you want them to; they'll go too far; it's human nature. The more you give, the more you may give. You once get your fellows to thinking, and asking all sorts of questions, and they get discontented at once. I've seen that thing tried in one or two instances, and it didn't turn out well. Fellows got restless and discontented. The more was given to them, the more dissatisfied they grew, till finally they put for the free states."
Mr. Jekyl's belief in slavery was founded on his theology. He assumed that the white race had the largest amount of being; therefore, it had a right to take precedence of the black.
who worships a God that creates myriads only to glorify himself in their eternal torments?
but when I got to be about fourteen or fifteen, I began to feel kind o' bad—sort of strange and heavy. I really didn't know why, but 'peared like's when I got older, I felt I was in bondage.
But, when he found
a miserable, poor, sick woman, surrounded by four starving children, Jake's mother's milk came back to him; and, instead of turning them out, he actually pitched a dish of cold potatoes in among them, which he picked up in a neighboring cabin, with about the same air of contemptuous pity with which one throws scraps to a dog. And then, meandering his way back to the house, informed his master that "He couldn't turn de white trash out; and, if he wanted them turned out, he would have to go hisself."
When a cloud is full charged with electricity, it makes no difference which bit of wire is put in.
Crouched on a pile of dirty straw, sat
a miserable, haggard woman, with large, wild eyes, sunken cheeks, dishevelled, matted hair, and long, lean hands, like bird's-claws. At her skinny breast an emaciated infant was hanging, pushing, with its little skeleton hands, as if to force the nourishment which nature no longer gave; and two scared-looking children, with features wasted and pinched blue with famine, were clinging to her gown. The whole group huddled together, drawing as far as possible away from the new-comer, looked up with large, frightened eyes, like hunted wild animals.
Everybody will stand up for him, and put me down; all because my grandmother was born in Africa, and his grandmother was born in America.
"You are not my master!" said Harry, in words whose concentrated calmness conveyed more bitterness and wrath than could have been given by the most violent outburst.
Wild and startling as the apparition might have been, it appeared to be no stranger to Harry; for, after the first movement of surprise, he said, in a tone of familiar recognition, in which there was blended somewhat of awe and respect:—
speaking in bitter irony, "did your master strike you? It's sweet to kiss the rod, isn't it? Bend your neck and ask to be struck again!—won't you? Be meek and lowly! that's the religion for you! You are a slave, and you wear broadcloth, and sleep soft. By and by he will give you a fip to buy salve for those cuts! Don't fret about your wife! Women always like the master better than the slave! Why shouldn't they? When a man licks his master's foot, his wife scorns him,—serves him right. Take it meekly, my boy! 'Servants, obey your masters.' Take your master's old coats—take your wife when he's
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There was an uprising within him, vague, tumultuous, overpowering; dim instincts, heroic aspirations; the will to do, the soul to dare; and then, in a moment, there followed the picture of all society leagued against him, the hopeless impossibility of any outlet to what was burning within him.
'Don't talk dat ar way, chile!' said Milly; using the freedom with Harry which her years and weight of character had gradually secured for her among the members of the plantation. "I will talk that way! Why shouldn't I? I am not going to be good any longer." "Why, 'twon't help de matter to be bad, will it, Harry? 'Cause you hate Tom Gordon, does you want to act just like him?"
it don't answer to go to telling about a heavenly Jerusalem! We want something here. We'll have it too! How do you know there is any heaven, anyhow?"
Chile, we's nothing but great babies, but an't got our eyes opened—rooting round and round; but de Father'll feed us yet—he will so."
It has been a problem to many, how the system of slavery in America should unite the two apparent inconsistencies of a code of slave-laws more severe than that of any other civilized nation, with an average practice at least as indulgent as any other; for, bad as slavery is at the best, it may yet be admitted that the practice, as a whole, has been less cruel in this country than in many. An examination into history will show us that the cruelty of the laws resulted from the effects of indulgent practice. During the first years of importation of slaves into South Carolina, they enjoyed many
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"To be sure," said Clayton, "if we only use books aright. With many people, reading is only a form of mental indolence, by which they escape the labor of thinking for themselves. Some persons are like Pharaoh's lean kine; they swallow book upon book, but remain as lean as ever."
CHAPTER XXII. THE WORSHIPPERS.
For money he would do anything; for money he would have sold his wife, his children, even his own soul, if he had happened to have one.
Our readers must not necessarily suppose Ben to have been a monster for all this, when they recollect that, within a few years, both the great political parties of our Union solemnly pledged themselves, as far as in them lay, to accept a similar vocation; and, as many of them were in good and regular standing in churches, and had ministers to preach sermons to the same effect, we trust they'll entertain no unreasonable prejudice against Ben on this account.
I'll tell you what!" said Ben to his wife, "I am going to talk to that ar old Elder Settle. I runs more niggers for him than any man in the county, and I know there's some reason for it. Niggers don't run into swamps when they's treated well. Folks that professes religion, I think, oughtn't to starve their niggers, no way!"
If ever Tiff came near having a pang in his heart, it was at that moment; but he retreated stoutly upon the idea that, however appearances might be against them, his family was no less ancient and honorable for that; and, therefore, putting on all his dignity, he gave his beast an extra cut, as who should say, "I don't care."
The reader must follow us far beyond the abodes of man, into the recesses of that wild desolation known as the "Dismal Swamp."
forming an impenetrable thicket. The creeping plants sometimes climb seventy or eighty feet up the largest tree, and hang in heavy festoons from their branches. It would seem impossible that human feet could penetrate the wild, impervious jungle; but we must take our readers through it, to a cleared spot, where trunks of fallen trees, long decayed, have formed an island of vegetable mould, which the art of some human hand has extended and improved.
which might well bid defiance to man or beast.
and nature, seconding the efforts of the fugitives who sought refuge here, has interlaced the frame-work thus made with thorny cat-briers, cables of grape-vine,
