Sublime

self-abnegating

Had a brand of animal cleverness, the kind you see in pigs sometimes.

in obscure disgrace;

“Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa.”

when precisely did the author know she was in trouble?

You never saw me as equal. You were more concerned that slavery should be a moral stain upon white men than by the actual damage it wreaks on black men.”

James

Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.

How could he have treated me so, he who congratulated himself on his belief that I was his equal? I had never been his equal. To him, perhaps, any deep acceptance of equality was impossible. He saw only those who were there to be saved, and those who did the saving.