"What is that, Mr. Ogg?" said the feminine-voiced negro.
"Making away with the negro-traders, they say."
"See me! see me!" exclaimed the first voice. "Dey'll hang her some day fur dat."
"Now," resumed Mr. Ogg, "a man of intelligence like you and me, Mr. Ransom—pardon, sir, does your shackle incommode you? I'll stuff it with some wool—"
"Politely, Mr. Ogg; I'm ironed rather too tight."
"I say, Mr. Ransom, you and I can always play the average slaveholder for a fool. Why, I hardly get into any family before I make love to some member of it, and if I don't vamose with a black wench, it's with her mistress."
"Ah, Mr. Ogg, they are perfectly fiendish in resenting that!"
"Of course, but there's a grand tit-for-tat going through all nature. Why, sir, the pleasures of the far South, to a man of art and enterprise like you, far exceed this poor, plain region. Take the roof off slavery and the blacks have rather the best of it; the whites would think so if they could see what is going on."
"Politely, Mr. Ogg; will not the entire institution some day blow itself out, like one of their Western steamboats?"
"No doubt of it, Mr. Ransom. When we have disposed of you, and you can see the country for yourself, observe how sensitive slaveholding is! A thousand anxieties lie in it. They believe in insurrections, rapes, and incendiaries. A perfect sleep they hardly know, but go prowling around night and day, driven by their suspicions. It makes them warlike, yet unhappy, and the slaves eat the ground poor. Besides, they have terrible enemies in the negro-traders, whom they look down on socially, and really drive them into sympathy with the negroes. Mr. Murrell, for instance, has a grand plan for a slave insurrection. He says white society is all against him, and he'll get even with it."