It is quite true, that this interest was never very marked, and it seldom showed itself in anything more than in giving me a piece of bread when I was hungry; but this was a great favor on a slave plantation, and I was the only one of the children to whom such attention was paid.
Douglass emphasizes the profound significance of even minor acts of kindness, like receiving a piece of bread, within the harsh environment of a slave plantation.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.
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.