I caught only a few of his last words;--"take your backbone for a for'ard X." I snapped my thumb and finger at him, though not lifting my arm from my side.

The human spinal column, with its vertebrae, for an axle-tree of a wagon! And yet, I immediately thought, the poor negro's back is truly "the for'ard X" of the great wagon of our American commerce.

But I let him depart.
Salutary impressions, I cannot question, dear Aunty, were made upon his mind.

He had heard some things which would occupy his thoughts in his solitary trudge on his way to Boston.

That thought comforted me as I was writhing a little on my way home, under his opprobrious epithets; for you know that I was always sensitive when addressed with reproachful words.
I could not help recalling and analyzing his scalding words of contempt.
I took a certain pleasure in doing so, because, as I saw and felt the power of each in succession, I remembered what awful abuses flow from the tongues of Southern masters and mistresses continually, as they goad on their slaves to their work, or reproach them for not bringing in the brick for which they had given them no straw.