"Just" Friends?

After a long life of slavery, years hiding in a wet basement where she could not stand up, an escape to New York where she was subject to slave catchers kidnapping her and returning her to bondage under the Fugitive Slave Act, Harriet Jacobs says of the woman who purchased her freedom: "Friend! It is a common word, often lightly used. Like other good and beautiful things, it may be tarnished by careless handling; but when I speak of Mrs. Bruce as my friend, the word is sacred."

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl