Judge: "You hadn't a comfortable home?"
Slave: "Oh, Lor', makes me cry to think of my pretty little cabin down dar in old Kaintuck."
Judge, after a pause: "You had a good, kind master, you were not overworked, plenty to eat, good clothes, fine home. I don't see why the devil you wished to run away."
Slave: "Well, Judge, I lef de situation down dar open. You kin go rite down and git it."
The Judge had seen a great light.
"Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know."
That the colored people in such numbers risked all for liberty is the best possible proof that they will steadily approach and finally reach the full stature of citizenship in the Republic.
I never saw Mr. Blaine so happy as while with us at Cluny. He was a boy again and we were a rollicking party together. He had never fished with a fly. I took him out on Loch Laggan and he began awkwardly, as all do, but he soon caught the swing. I shall never forget his first capture:
"My friend, you have taught me a new pleasure in life. There are a hundred fishing lochs in Maine, and I'll spend my holidays in future upon them trout-fishing."
At Cluny there is no night in June and we danced on the lawn in the bright twilight until late. Mrs. Blaine, Miss Dodge, Mr. Blaine, and other guests were trying to do the Scotch reel, and "whooping" like Highlanders. We were gay revelers during those two weeks. One night afterwards, at a dinner in our home in New York, chiefly made up of our Cluny visitors, Mr. Blaine told the company that he had discovered at Cluny what a real holiday was. "It is when the merest trifles become the most serious events of life."