{"id":"01KG8AMXWEA8D0DYH4J26BMXW7","cid":"bafkreigrbedatsqxwgbr5sbmqzqzcruvjgf7bxf2pg4cxderjnu7duco4q","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5520,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":5468,"text":"V.\r\n\r\n\"I must have been nine, or ten, or eleven years old, when the\r\npleasant-looking woman carried me away from the large house. She was a\r\nfarmer's wife; and now that was my residence, the farm-house. They\r\ntaught me to sew, and work with wool, and spin the wool; I was nearly\r\nalways busy now. This being busy, too, this it must have been, which\r\npartly brought to me the power of being sensible of myself as something\r\nhuman. Now I began to feel strange differences. When I saw a snake\r\ntrailing through the grass, and darting out the fire-fork from its\r\nmouth, I said to myself, That thing is not human, but I am human. When\r\nthe lightning flashed, and split some beautiful tree, and left it to rot\r\nfrom all its greenness, I said, That lightning is not human, but I am\r\nhuman. And so with all other things. I can not speak coherently here;\r\nbut somehow I felt that all good, harmless men and women were human\r\nthings, placed at cross-purposes, in a world of snakes and lightnings,\r\nin a world of horrible and inscrutable inhumanities. I have had no\r\ntraining of any sort. All my thoughts well up in me; I know not whether\r\nthey pertain to the old bewilderings or not; but as they are, they are,\r\nand I can not alter them, for I had nothing to do with putting them in\r\nmy mind, and I never affect any thoughts, and I never adulterate any\r\nthoughts; but when I speak, think forth from the tongue, speech being\r\nsometimes before the thought; so, often, my own tongue teaches me new\r\nthings.\r\n\r\n\"Now as yet I never had questioned the woman, or her husband, or the\r\nyoung girls, their children, why I had been brought to the house, or how\r\nlong I was to stay in the house. There I was; just as I found myself in\r\nthe world; there I was; for what cause I had been brought into the\r\nworld, would have been no stranger question to me, than for what cause I\r\nhad been brought to the house. I knew nothing of myself, or any thing\r\npertaining to myself; I felt my pulse, my thought; but other things I\r\nwas ignorant of, except the general feeling of my humanness among the\r\ninhumanities. But as I grew older, I expanded in my mind. I began to\r\nlearn things out of me; to see still stranger, and minuter differences.\r\nI called the woman mother, and so did the other girls; yet the woman\r\noften kissed them, but seldom me. She always helped them first at table.\r\nThe farmer scarcely ever spoke to me. Now months, years rolled on, and\r\nthe young girls began to stare at me. Then the bewilderingness of the\r\nold starings of the solitary old man and old woman, by the cracked\r\nhearth-stone of the desolate old house, in the desolate, round, open\r\nspace; the bewilderingness of those old starings now returned to me; and\r\nthe green starings, and the serpent hissings of the uncompanionable cat,\r\nrecurred to me, and the feeling of the infinite forlornness of my life\r\nrolled over me. But the woman was very kind to me; she taught the girls\r\nnot to be cruel to me; she would call me to her, and speak cheerfully to\r\nme, and I thanked--not God, for I had been taught no God--I thanked the\r\nbright human summer, and the joyful human sun in the sky; I thanked the\r\nhuman summer and the sun, that they had given me the woman; and I would\r\nsometimes steal away into the beautiful grass, and worship the kind\r\nsummer and the sun; and often say over to myself the soft words, summer\r\nand the sun.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKSYX4EXV22E59EAFDW98","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMXWE8Z4XMT6AA0KZCTHV","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:53.134Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:16.837Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}