The answer was in Harry's firmest:—"His duty as a man. It was real, hearty kindness that he showed us. We owe him a great deal. I am not sure that we did not owe him our lives that dark night. I regard him as a friend."
"Your other friends are flattered.—It is curious how these negrophiles betray themselves";—the Doctor had turned to me;—"they show that they think of the blacks just as we do, by their admiration when they meet one who shows signs of intelligence and good feeling." Ho looked at Harry, but in vain. "Here Harry, now, has been falling into transports all along the road." Harry kept his eyes on the table, but the Doctor was not to be balked. "Confess now, confess you have been surprised—and a good deal more surprised than I was—to find common sense and humanity in black men!"
"No, not in black men. I have been surprised to find not only talent and judgment, but dignity and magnanimity, in slaves."
"You must find the system not altogether a bad one which has developed such specimens of the human being,—out of such material, above all."
"You must admit that the race is a strong and a high one which has not been utterly debased by such a system,—if it is to be called a system. I only wish our own race"——
"Showed an equal power of resistance?"
"That was what I was going to say."
"You might have said it. Yes,—the whites are the real sufferers."
"I stopped because I remembered instances of men who have resisted nobly."
"I am glad you can do justice to them. I thought you did not believe in humane slaveholders."