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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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CHAPTER 31The Middle Passage“Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look upon iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?”- HAB. 1:13. ON the lower part of a small, mean boat, on the Red River, Tom sat,- chains on his wrists, chains on his feet, and a weight heavier than chains lay on his heart. All had faded from his skys-moon and star; all had passed by him, as the trees and banks were now passing to return no more. Kentucky home, with wife and children, and indulgent owners; St. Clare home, with all its refinements and splen- dors; the golden head of Eva, with its saint-like eyes; the proud, gay, handsome, seemingly careless, yet ever-kind St. Clare; hours of ease and indulgent leisure,- all gone! and in place thereof, what remains? It is one of the bitterest apportionments of a lot of slavery, that the negro, sym- pathetic and assimilative, after acquiring, in a refined family, the tastes and feel- ings which form the atmosphere of such a place, is not the less liable to become the bond-slave of the coarsest and most brutal,- just as a chair or table, which once decorated the superb saloon, comes, at last, battered and defaced, to the bar- |
