A Change of Heart
An irate coal merchant squares up to the oh-so-righteous gentleman who didn’t like the way he was treating his horse.
before 1833
King George III 1760-1820 to King William IV 1830-1837
An irate coal merchant squares up to the oh-so-righteous gentleman who didn’t like the way he was treating his horse.
before 1833
King George III 1760-1820 to King William IV 1830-1837
Following the death of William Wilberforce, the great anti-slavery campaigner, on July 29th, 1833, an impressive list of statesmen requested a fitting funeral in Westminster Abbey. Ordinary people grieved in their many thousands too, and a generation later Travers Buxton recalled that this affection was of long standing.
abridged
MORE striking still was the general mourning of the people of London and the respect shown to his memory both in this country and in the United States, especially among the coloured population who owed him so much. The reverence shown to Wilberforce by the public was indeed no new thing. He said of himself that the public treated him ‘as if he were some great person.’
Walking up a steep narrow street one day at Bath he saw a carter savagely ill-treating a horse which had fallen in trying to drag up a heavy load of coals. Wilberforce quickly stepped forward to intervene, horrified at the man’s cruelty, when the burly carter turned on him with a torrent of abuse and would have struck him had not his mate stopped him, and whispered who the gentleman was. In a moment the man was softened; his look of rage changed to one of reverence, and he apologised to Wilberforce for his rude violence.
abridged
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
How did Wilberforce make the carter angry?
By reproving his mistreatment of a horse.