For such friendship I was deeply grateful, and bitter as are my recollections of slavery, it is a true pleasure 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.
In his autobiography, Douglass reflects on the enduring value of small acts of kindness, which offered glimmers of hope and humanity during his enslavement.
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It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.
For the moment the northern lamb was transformed into a lion, and his roar was terrible.
I believed I should get enough to eat at Covey’s, even if I suffered in other respects, and this to a hungry man is not a prospect to be regarded with indifference.
We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.