In a letter to a friend, written soon after reaching New York.

I said I felt as one might be supposed to feel, on escaping from a den of hungry lions.

But, in a moment like that, sensations are too intense and too rapid for words.

Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be described, but joy and gladness, like the rainbow of promise, defy alike the pen and pencil.
For ten or fifteen years I had been dragging a heavy chain, with a huge block attached to it, cumbering my every motion.

I had felt myself doomed to drag this chain and this block through life.