A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-32

Catherine often notes the contrast between warmth and cold during the winter in which she helps the fugitive. The extremes function symbolically to show the coldness of a society that would turn in someone running away from enslavers and the kindness that Catherine and her friends extend toward him when they leave a quilt for him.

Charles’s attitude toward self-liberated people represents the coldness shown by law-abiding citizens toward runaways. He expresses this attitude when he is speaking of “bound boys,” or indentured servants. He tells his brother that if he were to find a runaway bound boy, he would “[t]urn him out and turn him in” (11). His words haunt Catherine after she discovers the message written in her lesson book: “PLEEZ MISS TAKE PITTY I AM COLD” (20). The runaway experiences both literal cold and the coldness of a society that is turned against him.

In extending physical warmth to the self-liberated man by way of the quilt that Catherine leaves for him, she is also extending kindness. As Cassie tells her, in agreeing to help the man, “Kindness must be the highest virtue” (28). The symbolic meaning of this offer of warmth returns when the girls leave the quilt in the wintry clearing.