I did my best to swallow this bitter lesson, and to acquire a portion of that hypocritical humility, so necessary to a person in my unhappy condition. Humility, and whether it be real or pretended, they care but little, is esteemed by masters, the great and crowning virtue of a slave ; for they understand by it, a disposition to submit, without resistance or complaint, to every possible wrong and indignity ; to reply to the most opprobrious and unjust accusation’ with a soft voice and a smiling face; to take kicks, cuffs and blows as though they were favors ; to kiss the foot that treads you to the dust!
This sort of humility was a virtue, with which, I must confess, nature had but scantily endowed me; nor did I find it so easy as 1 might have desired, to strip myself of all the feelings of a man. It was like quitting the erect carriage which I had received at God’s hand, and learning to crawl on the earth like a base reptile. This was indeed a hard lesson. But an American overseer is a stern teacher, and if I learned but slowly, it was not the fault of Mr Stubbs.
CHAPTER VII.
It would be irksome to myself, and tedious to the reader, to enter into a minute detail of all the miserable and monotonous incidents that made up my life at this time. ‘The last chapter is a specimen, from which it may be judged, what sort of pleasures I enjoyed. ‘They may be summed up in a few words; and the single sentence which embraces this part of my history, might suffice to describe the whole lives of many thousand Americans. I was hard worked, ill fed, and well whipped. Mr Stubbs having once begun with me, did not suffer me to get over the effects of one flogging before he inflicted another ; and I have some marks of his about me, which I expect to carry to the grave. All this time he assured me, that what he did was only for my own good; and he swore that he would never give over till he had lashed my cursed insolence out of me.
