Miss Emily Flint, now Mrs. Dodge:—

Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders

They don’t allow colored people to go in the first-class cars.”

This was the first chill to my enthusiasm about the Free States. Colored people were allowed to ride in a filthy box, behind white people, at the south, but there they were not required to pay for the privilege.

how slavery perverted all the natural feelings of the human heart

O Slavery! Never should I know peace till my children were emancipated with all due formalities of law.

Senator Brown, of Mississippi

The next day she and her baby were sold to a Georgia trader.

Yet the laws allowed him to be out in the free air, while I, guiltless of crime, was pent up here, as the only means of avoiding the cruelties the laws allowed him to inflict upon me!

turpentine

I had not the slightest idea where I was going.

if he is a damned brute.

Give me liberty, or give me death,

They send the Bible to heathen abroad, and neglect the heathen at home. I am glad that missionaries go out to the dark corners of the earth; but I ask them not to overlook the dark corners at home.

White man is got all de sense.

She rose to her feet, and said, in piteous tones, “My Lord and Master, help me! My load is more than I can bear. God has hid himself from me

If you disobey your earthly master, you offend your heavenly Master.

Mighty is the power of the torturing lash.

Where could I go?

I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard as others.

few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system.

I am going to hell; bury my money with me.

eighth commandment.

he had seen a runaway friend of mine in New York, and that she besought him to take her back to her master, for she was literally dying of starvation

Moreover, as a married man, and a professional man, he deemed it necessary to save appearances in some degree.

for them she had no sympathy

My master began to whisper foul words in my ear.

his white face did him a kindly service.

she learned to call on God

We don’t die but once. ”

Linda

God was leading me through such thorny paths

I have no right to sell her.

she was now mistress of a snug little home

the old black woman was left

they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother was bought by a man in her own town. Before night her children were all far away. She begged the trader to tell her where he intended to take them; this he refused to do. How could he

four or five holidays,

not

Dr. Flint was an epicure

The slaves could get nothing to eat except what she chose to give them.

She was a member of the church; but partaking of the Lord’s supper did not seem to put her in a Christian frame of mind.

now my brother and I were slaves to the man who had defrauded her of her money, and tried to defraud her of her freedom.

She gave the old servant her freedom.

he was ashamed of the job.

retaining the silver candelabra, which had been purchased with that money.

he said the estate was insolvent

father is dead.

Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings.

“Who knows the ways of God?” said she. “Perhaps they have been kindly taken from the evil days to come.”

bequeathed me to her sister’s daughter, a child of five years old.

too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel.

weaned at three months old, that the babe of the mistress might obtain sufficient food.

The reader probably knows that no promise or writing given to a slave is legally binding; for, according to Southern laws, a slave, being property, can hold no property.

Babo, performing the office of an officious servant with all the appearance of submission of the humble slave, did not leave the deponent one moment; that this was in order to observe the deponent’s actions and words,

relaxed from constraint, showed some signs of regaining health with free-will

score

the American did not give up his design.

Captain Delano, now with scales dropped from his eyes, saw the negroes, not in misrule, not in tumult, not as if frantically concerned for Don Benito, but with mask torn away, flourishing hatchets and knives, in ferocious piratical revolt.

but still Don Benito would not let go his hand.

since he (Captain Delano) would with pleasure take upon himself the responsibility of making the best use of the wind.

but in all things his confidant.

uncommonly intelligent fellow

See, Don Amasa, master always shakes when I shave him.

Captain Delano took to negroes, not philanthropically, but genially, just as other men to Newfoundland dogs.

grayness of everything

the former seemed as docile as the latter the contrary? The whites, too, by nature, were the shrewder race. A man with some evil design

Ledyard

The alleged Don Benito was in early manhood, about twenty-nine or thirty

a black man’s slave was Babo, who now is the white’s.

Suddenly, one of the black boys, enraged at a word dropped by one of his white companions, seized a knife, and, though called to forbear by one of the oakum-pickers, struck the lad over the head, inflicting a gash from which blood flowed.

a high-crowned sombrero, of fine grass; a slender sword,

the black upholding the white

What the San Dominick wanted

involuntary victim of mental disorder

peculiar natures on whom prolonged physical suffering seems to cancel every social instinct of kindness;

Babo.

but seemed never to have been robust

biting his lip, biting his finger-nail, flushing, paling, twitching his beard, with other symptoms of an absent or moody mind. This distempered spirit

hypochondriac

greater energy, misrule would hardly have come to the present pass

with the peculiar love in negroes of uniting industry with pastime

the raw aspect of unsophisticated Africans.

with a sort of stoical self-content, were picking the junk into oakum

Manilla men

each letter streakingly corroded with tricklings of copper-spike rust

conglobated

However, no guns were seen.

The spars, ropes, and great part of the bulwarks, looked woolly, from long unacquaintance with the scraper, tar, and the brush. Her keel seemed laid, her ribs put together

from Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones.

the good captain put several baskets of the fish, for presents

showed no colors

had he not been a person of a singularly undistrustful good-nature, not liable, except on extraordinary and repeated incentives, and hardly then, to indulge in personal alarms, any way involving the imputation of malign evil in man.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love

And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me,

busses,

My lovers suffocate me,

We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.

I know perfectly well my own egotism,

The hiss of the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw, Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan,

That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men.

Landscapes projected masculine

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long hair, Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore, Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly; Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

her coarse straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her feet.

Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders, On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck

bride was a red girl,

Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game,

The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom, I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has fallen.

as immortal and fathomless as myself, (They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

I am the mate and companion of people

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

poke-weed.

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love,

I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?

Let a Stoic open the resources of man

Ask nothing of men

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all

As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.

He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle.

Let a man then know his worth,

I suppose no man can violate his nature.

Their virtues are penances

you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.

when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle’s flagon

Having nothing to do at home

He obeyed with fear and trembling

but no dog was to be seen.

He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another; and he repeated his visits to the flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep

most of them had enormous breeches

alacrity

heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle

was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods.

termagant

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on.

was a strong dislike of all kinds of profitable labor.

the works of the Lord, and His wonderful power in carrying us along, preserving us

he gave me a pancake, about as big as two fingers. It was made of parched wheat, beaten, and fried in bear’s grease

Philip spake to me to make a shirt for his boy, which I did, for which he gave me a shilling. I offered the money to my master, but he bade me keep it

Psalm 137.1

“Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return: the Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

God

My own wound also growing so stiff

but God was with me in a wonderful manner

It is not my tongue, or pen, can express the sorrows of my heart, and bitterness of my spirit that I had at this departure:

God did not give them courage or activity to go over after us.

wigwams

squaws

I cannot but take notice of the strange providence of God in preserving the heathen.

it was very hard to get down their filthy trash

By the advantage of some brush which they had laid upon the raft to sit upon, I did not wet my foot

I wished her not to run away by any means, for we were near thirty miles

There were now besides myself nine English captives in this place (all of them children, except one woman).

viz.

I had one child dead, another in the wilderness, I knew not where, the third they would not let me come near to:

It being about six years, and five months old.

picture of death in my lap.

“your master will knock your child in the head,”

there being not the least crumb of refreshing that came within either of our mouths from Wednesday night to Saturday night

creatures

Who determines what counts as American literature?

There is a lot to be considered

What is the difference between American literature and American history?

consider what it means for literature to be “American.”