doing anything against oppression; whether you belong to any Association
whose object is"--

"What on airth did you stop me for," said he, quite impatiently, and
yet with a lingering gleam of respect, and with some hesitancy at any
further rudeness of speech.

"My dear sir," said I, "four millions of Southern slaves are this very
hour groaning under sorrows which no tongue"--

"You"--(he hesitated a moment, and surveyed me from head to foot, and
then broke out,)--"putty-headed, white-birch-looking, nateral--stoppin'
a load right near the crown of a hill, no gully in the road, such a day
as this, and--'Ged ehp,'"--said he to his horses, as the stones under
the wheels that moment began to give way; and then he drew his lash
through one hand, with a most angry look. I really thought that I should
have to feel that lash. The thought instantly nerved me:--I'll bear it!
it's for the slave; let me remember them, I might have added, that are
whipped as whipped with them; but at that moment the horses had reached
the hill-top, and the driver was by their side.

He called back, as he passed round the rear of his load to the nigh side
of his team. I caught only a few of his last words;--"take your backbone
for a for'ard X." I snapped my thumb and finger at him, though not
lifting my arm from my side. The human spinal column, with its vertebrae,
for an axle-tree of a wagon! And yet, I immediately thought, the poor
negro's back is truly "the for'ard X" of the great wagon of our American
commerce. But I let him depart.

Salutary impressions, I cannot question, dear Aunty, were made upon his
mind. He had heard some things which would occupy his thoughts in his
solitary trudge on his way to Boston. That thought comforted me as I was
writhing a little on my way home, under his opprobrious epithets; for
you know that I was always sensitive when addressed with reproachful
words.

I could not help recalling and analyzing his scalding words of contempt.
I took a certain pleasure in doing so, because, as I saw and felt the
power of each in succession, I remembered what awful abuses flow from
the tongues of Southern masters and mistresses continually, as they goad
on their slaves to their work, or reproach them for not bringing in the
brick for which they had given them no straw. So it was comparatively a
light affliction for me to remember that I had been called by such hard
names. "Putty-headed!" said he. I infer, dear Aunty, that he