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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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thrill at that word, for which your fathers bled, and your braver mothers were will- ing that their noblest and best should die? Is there anything in it glorious and dear for a nation, that is not also glorious and dear for a man? What is freedom to a nation, but freedom to the individuals in it? What is freedom to that young man, who sits there, with his arms folded over his broad chest, the tint of African blood in his cheek, its dark fires in his eye,- what is freedom to George Harris? To your fathers, freedom was the right of a nation to be a nation. To him, it is the right of a man to be a man, and not a brute; the right to call the wife of his bosom his wife, and to protect her from law- less violence; the right to protect and educate his child; the right to have a home of his own, a religion of his own, a character of his own, unsubject to the will of another. All these thoughts were rolling and seething in George’s breast, as he was pensively leaning his head on his hand, watching his wife, as she was adapt- ing to her slender and pretty form the articles of man’s attire, in which it was deemed safest she should make her escape. “Now for it,” said she, as she stood before the glass, and shook down her silky abundance of black, curly hair. “I say, George, it’s almost a pity, isn’t it,” she said, as she held up some of it, playfully,- “pity it’s all got to come off?” George smiled sadly, and made no answer. Eliza turned to the glass, and the scissors glittered as one long lock after an- other was detached from her head. |
