Free as I seem to your eyes, gal, I'm bound
hand and foot in ra'ality."
"Well it is a great misfortune not to have sense! Now I can't see
or understand that you are a captive, or bound in any manner. If
you are bound, with what are your hands and feet fastened?"
"With a furlough, gal; that's a thong that binds tighter than any
chain. One may be broken, but the other can't. Ropes and chains
allow of knives, and desait, and contrivances; but a furlough can
be neither cut, slipped nor sarcumvented."
"What sort of a thing is a furlough, then, if it be stronger than
hemp or iron? I never saw a furlough."
"I hope you may never feel one, gal; the tie is altogether in the
feelin's, in these matters, and therefore is to be felt and not
seen. You can understand what it is to give a promise, I dare to
say, good little Hetty?"
"Certainly. A promise is to say you will do a thing, and that binds
you to be as good as your word. Mother always kept her promises
to me, and then she said it would be wicked if I didn't keep my
promises to her, and to every body else."
"You have had a good mother, in some matters, child, whatever she
may have been in other some. That is a promise, and as you say it
must be kept.
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