Answer:
The excerpt is taken from the biographical account of Harriet Tubman titled, ‘Harriet Tubman, The Moses of Her People’. This is a story of a woman who suffered because of racial discrimination, but she did fight against slavery, helped her family and members of her community to free themselves from the clutches of the perpetrators of their suffering. She was grateful to her friend, Frederick Douglass, who had hidden her, and some runaway slaves more than once in his home in Rochester. Read the passage (a letter to Harriet by Frederick Douglass) given below and answer the questions that follow. "The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have laboured in a private way. I have wrought in the day—you in the night. I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude, while the most you have done witnessed by few trembling, scared, and footsore bondmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt God bless you has been your only reward. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and your heroism." When years later, in her old age, a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune came to interview her one afternoon at her home in Auburn, he wrote that, as he was leaving, Harriet looked towards an orchard nearby and said, "Do you like apples?" On being assured that the young man liked them, she asked, "Did you ever plant any apples?" The writer confessed that he had not. "No" said the old woman, "but somebody else planted them". I liked apples when I was young. And I said, "Someday I’ll plant apples myself for other young folks to eat. And I guess I did." Her apples were the apples of freedom. Harriet Tubman lived to see the harvest. Her home in Auburn, New York, is preserved as a memorial to her planting. (Source: Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People, by Langston Hughes) Q.1. What had Harriet done for herself and her community? Q.2. What was the title of the first book written on Harriet Tubman and who wrote it? Q.3. How had Harriet’s life been hard, but dedicated to a cause? Q.4. What comparison had Frederick drawn between his and Harriet’s life? Q.5. Tick the correct answers. Harriet had been grateful to Frederick because: (a) Frederick was her neighbour. ( ) (b) Harriet took financial help from Frederick. ( ) (c) Harriet revolted as a slave and ran away from her master’s house and Frederick gave her shelter. ( ) (d) Frederick hid other slaves in his house whom Harriet had inspired to run away. ( ) Q.6. Tick the correct answer. ‘footsore bondmen and women’ means: (a) Bondaged men and women had to work day and night. ( ) (b) Bondmen and women suffered from foot diseases. ( ) (c) Bondmen and women were bonded labourers. ( ) (d) Bondaged men and women had wounded and tired feet because they ran for days together to safe places from the house of theirExplanation:
