As to lying abed and
reading novels, he was free to say that he believed in it.
"We get very indignant about slavery in the south," he used to say;
"but how about slavery on the northern farms? I know people who
rise at cock-crow and strain their sinews in heavy toil the
livelong day, and spend the Sabbath trembling in the lonely shadow
of the Valley of Death. I know a man who whipped his boy till he
bled because he ran away to go fishing. It's all slavery, pure and
simple."
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return
unto the ground," said Ezra Tower.
"If God said it, he made slaves of us all," said young Trove.
"When I look around here and see people wasted to the bone with
sweat and toil, too weary often to eat the bread they have earned,
when I see their children dying of consumption from excess of
labour and pork fat, I forget the slaves of man and think only of
these wretched slaves of God."
But Polly was not of them the teacher pitied. She was a bit
discontented; but surely she was cheerful and well fed. God gave
her beauty, and the widow saw it, and put her own strength between
the curse and the child. Folly had her task every day, but Polly
had her way, also, in too many things, and became a bit selfish, as
might have been expected.
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