For such friendship I felt deeply grateful, and bitter as are my recollections of slavery, I love to recall any instances of kindness, any sunbeams of humane treatment, which found way to my soul through the iron grating of my house of bondage.
Reflecting on his early life in slavery, Douglass expresses gratitude for small acts of kindness that illuminated the harsh reality of his bondage.
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A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.
Father he might be, and not be husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in its veins coursed one drop of African blood.
I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest, and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother.
My grandmother was all the world to me, and the thought of being separated from her was a most unwelcome suggestion to my affections and hopes.