[Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe]@TWC D-Link bookUncle Tom's Cabin CHAPTER XIX 3/41
The best we can do is to shut our eyes and ears, and let it alone.
It's the only resource left us." "How can you shut your eyes and ears? How can you let such things alone ?" "My dear child, what do you expect? Here is a whole class,--debased, uneducated, indolent, provoking,--put, without any sort of terms or conditions, entirely into the hands of such people as the majority in our world are; people who have neither consideration nor self-control, who haven't even an enlightened regard to their own interest,--for that's the case with the largest half of mankind.
Of course, in a community so organized, what can a man of honorable and humane feelings do, but shut his eyes all he can, and harden his heart? I can't buy every poor wretch I see.
I can't turn knight-errant, and undertake to redress every individual case of wrong in such a city as this.
The most I can do is to try and keep out of the way of it." St.Clare's fine countenance was for a moment overcast; he said, "Come, cousin, don't stand there looking like one of the Fates; you've only seen a peep through the curtain,--a specimen of what is going on, the world over, in some shape or other.
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