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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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“What an undutiful boy you are!” said Miss Ophelia. “I don’t mean them any disrespect,” said St. Clare. “You know reverence is not my forte. But, to go back to my history: “When father died, he left the whole property to us twin boys, to be divided as we should agree. There does not breathe on God’s earth a nobler-souled, more generous fellow, than Alfred, in all that concerns his equals; and we got on admi- rably with this property question, without a single unbrotherly word or feeling. We undertook to work the plantation together; and Alfred, whose outward life and capabilities had double the strength of mine, became an enthusiastic planter, and a wonderfully successful one. “But two years’ trial satisfied me that I could not be a partner in that matter. To have a great gang of seven hundred, whom I could not know personally, or feel any individual interest in, bought and driven, housed, fed, worked like so many horned cattle, strained up to military precision,- the question of how little of life’s commonest enjoyments would keep them in working order being a con- stantly recurring problem,- the necessity of drivers and overseers,- the ever-neces- sary whip, first, last, and only argument,- the whole thing was insufferably disgusting and loathsome to me; and when I thought of my mother’s estimate of one poor human soul, it became even frightful! “It’s all nonsense to talk to me about slaves enjoying all this! To this day, I have no patience with the unutterable trash that some of your patronizing North- erners have made up, as in their zeal to apologize for our sins. We all know better. |
