The day that I came home from my two interviews and efforts just
related, a pro-slavery student, a Senior, invited me into his room. He
is exceedingly kind and generous, though, I am sorry to say it, a friend
of oppression. He gave me a splendid apple, the first which I had seen
for the season. He dusted my coat with his feather-duster, and he even
dusted my boots. He asked me how far I had been walking. I told him all
which I had said and done, thinking that it would profitably remind him
of the great subject. He roared with laughter. "Three cheers for
Gustavus;" "isn't that rich;"--waving, all the while, the
feather-duster, and breaking out with fresh peals, as I related one
thing after another. The noise which he made brought in several of the
students from neighboring rooms, and he related my stories to them as
they stood with their thumbs and fingers holding open their text-books
at the places where they were studying. They were a curious looking set,
in their dressing-gowns, slippers, and smoking-caps; and the most of
them, unfortunately, happened to be pro-slavery, and advocates of
oppression; by which I mean, not in favor of my mode of viewing and
treating the subject of slavery. One of them was so amused and excited
that he lost all self-control. He threw down his book, caught me with
his two hands about the waist, and tickled me so that I fell upon the
floor. Then they raised a shout. We have cool nights here, sometimes, in
the warmest weather, and we keep, on the foot-boards of our beds, cotton
comforters, called _delusions_, because they are so downy and light. Two
of the students took the Senior's comforter and laid it on me; then four
of them sat down, one on each corner, to keep me underneath. I have told
you that it was a sultry August day. I thought that I should smother. I
told them so, as well as my choked voice would allow; but one of them
said, in a soft, meek tone, as I writhed in distress, "Hush, Gustavus,
lie still; you are certainly laboring under a delusion." This was all
the more painful from its being so cruelly true, in a literal sense,
while I knew that they had reference to my views with regard to freedom,
in the word "delusion." What sustained me in those moments, dear Aunty?
It was not that I had myself stood by when this trick was played on
Freshmen, and encouraged it by my actions; no, a higher and holier power
than conscience of wrong-doing wrought upon me in those moments. Oh, I
thought, the very cotton which fills this comforter, was cultivated by
the hand of a slave. And shall I complain at being nearly smothered by
it, when I remember what an incubus slavery is to the poor creature who
gathered this cotton, and what an incubus it is to our unhappy land? I
was delivered at last from my load, because my tormentors were tired of
their sport. Would that there were some prospect that they who load
cruel burdens on the slave were increasingly tired of their work!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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