The thought of only being a creature of the _present_ and the _past_, troubled me, and I longed to have a _future_--a future with hope in it.

To be shut up entirely to the past and present, is abhorrent to the human mind; it is to the soul--whose life and happiness is unceasing progress--what the prison is to the body; a blight and mildew, a hell of horrors.

The dawning of this, another year, awakened me from my temporary slumber, and roused into life my latent, but long cherished aspirations for freedom.

I was now not only ashamed to be contented in slavery, but ashamed to _seem_ to be contented, and in my present favorable condition, under the mild rule of Mr.F., I am not sure that some kind reader will not condemn me for being over ambitious, and greatly wanting in proper humility, when I say the truth, that I now drove from me all thoughts of making the best of my lot, and welcomed only such thoughts as led me away from the house of bondage.

The intense desires, now felt, _to be free_, quickened by my present favorable circumstances, brought me to the determination to act, as well as to think and speak.