Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition.
Observing ships on the Chesapeake Bay, Douglass contrasts the beauty of the vessels for free people with their tormenting symbolism for him as a slave.
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His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.
The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother.