Slavery -- United States -- Fiction; Underground Railroad -- Fiction
As he leaned toward her across his desk and she, seated at the other
side, bent her face toward him, even a casual observer might have seen
their relationship. For her countenance was a copy of his, a young,
soft, feminine copy, but yet formed clearly upon the same plan, even
in the details of feature and coloring. His eyes, large and gray like
hers, were calm and cool and judicial in expression, even when, as
now, they were alight with earnestness. His shaven upper lip, also,
was short, but it pressed upon the lower in a firm line, while all
his countenance expressed a sort of austerity that seemed to bespeak
a mind informed with intense moral conviction rather than hardness or
coldness of nature. But looking at the two faces thus, one could see
in hers the kindling fires of an emotionalism which would be forever
foreign to him, an incipient power of emotional exaltation which would
never be within his possibilities. But if there was less of warmth
in his eyes and of spirituality in his brow, poise and cool judgment
were written there, and far-sightedness, their inevitable offspring.
Of the intellectual, judicial type Dr. Ware’s countenance showed him
to be, and however much or little of such qualities his daughter had
inherited from him, along with her remarkable physical resemblance,
from elsewhere had come the emotional forces which now were trembling
in the sensitive curves of her mouth and glowing in her tear-wet eyes.
“There’s nothing in that book that couldn’t be duplicated right now in
the South, every day in the week,” Dr. Ware was saying in low, even
tones that nevertheless held such intensity of conviction that she
felt her nerves thrilling with it. “And even then, Rhoda, it’s only a
beginning! There are such horrors perpetrated under slavery as a young
girl like you can’t begin to realize!”
She shuddered, and he watched her silently as she pressed her lips
together and deliberately held her breath for a moment in the effort to
master her emotion.
“I don’t think I’ve ever quite realized anything about it before,” she
said in calmer voice, “although I’ve always believed, ever since I’ve
known anything about it, that it is wrong. But I’ve never felt, all
through me”--and she shivered again--“just how wrong it is, until this
book has made it seem all real and alive.”
She hesitated, leaning her arms upon the desk, and a puzzled expression
crossed her face. “But, father,” she presently went on, “why doesn’t
mother feel as you do about it? Her father owned slaves, and until she
married you she had always lived on the plantation with slaves all
around her. And she still thinks that slavery is right and that the
negroes are happier and better off in it than they would be if they
were free. She’s so kind and gentle, how can she feel as she does if
this book is true?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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