This Acknowledgment, However, Is Perhaps More
Particularly Due To The Female Part Of The Nation.
Among the men, as the
reader must have seen, my reception, though generally kind, was sometimes
otherwise.
It varied according to the various tempers of those to whom I
made application. The hardness of avarice in some, and the blindness of
bigotry in others, had closed up the avenues to compassion; but I do not
recollect a single instance of hard-heartedness towards me in the women.
In all my wanderings and wretchedness I found them uniformly kind and
compassionate; and I can truly say, as my predecessor Mr. Ledyard has
eloquently said before me, "To a woman, I never addressed myself in the
language of decency and friendship, without receiving a decent and
friendly answer. If I was hungry or thirsty, wet or sick, they did not
hesitate, like the men, to perform a generous action. In so free and so
kind a manner did they contribute to my relief, that if I was dry, I
drank the sweetest draught, and if hungry, I ate the coarsest morsel with
a double relish."
It is surely reasonable to suppose, that the soft and amiable sympathy of
nature, which was thus spontaneously manifested towards me, in my
distress, is displayed by these poor people as occasion requires, much
more strongly towards persons of their own nation and neighbourhood, and
especially when the objects of their compassion are endeared to them by
the ties of consanguinity. Accordingly, the maternal affection (neither
suppressed by the restraints, nor diverted by the solicitudes of
civilized life) is every where conspicuous among them; and creates a
correspondent return of tenderness in the child.
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