Read this excerpt from the narrative of the life of frederick douglass. a city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave on the plantation. . there is a vestige of decency, a sense of shame, that does much to curb and check those outbreaks of atrocious cruelty so commonly enacted upon the plantation. he is a desperate slaveholder, who will shock the humanity of his non-slaveholding neighbors with the cries of his lacerated slave. few are willing to incur the odium attaching to the reputation of being a cruel master; and above all things, they would not be known as not giving a slave enough to eat. what inference can be drawn about city slaveholders in this excerpt? they require enslaved persons to perform all labor indoors. they treat enslaved persons civilly to avoid their neighbors’ judgement. they are as unkind as plantation slaveholders, but they are quieter. they teach enslaved persons to read and become citizens of the city

They treat enslaved persons civilly to avoid their neighbours’ judgement.

Douglass argues that slaveowners in the city often treat their slaves better than those that live in plantations because they are worried about their reputation. He implies this by saying that they do not want to "incur the odium attaching to the reputation of being a cruel master." This concern for their reputation makes the life of a slave in the city a lot more tolerable.

the time most likely will repeat, in the story.

it was surely an odd creature that one made up by reading the historians first and the poets afterwards a worm winged like an eagle; the spirit of life and elegance and charm,   in a kitchen chopping up suet. but these creatures, monst'r however entertaining to the imagination, hast no existence in fact. what one might doth to bringeth h'r to life wast to bethink poetically and prosaically at one and the same moment,   thus keeping in toucheth with fact—that the lady is mrs martin, ag'd thirty-six, did dress in blue, wearing a black coxcomb and brown shoeth; but not losing sight of fiction eith'r—that the lady is a vessel in which all s'rts of spirits and f'rces art coursing and flashing p'rpetually. the moment, howev'r, yond one tries this method with the elizabethan mistress, one brancheth of illumination fails; one is did hold up by the scarcity of facts.   one knoweth nothing detailed, nothing p'rfectly true and substantial about h'r.   hist'ry scarcely mentions h'r.   and i did turn to professeth'r trevelyan again to seeth what hist'ry meanteth to that gent.   i hath found by looking at his chapt'r headings yond t meanteth.