"I was not thinking of them."
"Ah! to be sure not! My friend Harvey, who entertained us so hospitably, is a bad man, I suppose?"
"A mistaken man."
"That is to be proved; he is trying to work out a difficult problem."
"He is attempting an impossible compromise."
"Compromise! Word of fear to the true New-Englander! Compromise? He is trying to reconcile his own comfort with that of his laborers, I suppose you mean."
"He is trying to reconcile injustice with humanity."
"See the stern old Puritan vein! I doubt whether his ancestor, the model of Massachusetts governors, ever carried a stiffer upper lip." And the Doctor surveyed Harry with a look from which he could not exclude a certain softening of affectionate admiration. "And he, a living exemplification of the persistence of race, is a stickler for the equality of all mankind! It is hard for one of that strict line to bend his views to circumstances," the Doctor went on, in a more indulgent tone. "Harry, my boy, you are in a new latitude. You must accept another standard. You cannot try things here by the weights and measures of the Puritans of the North. But who are your examples of resistance, though?"
"The Puritans of the South. The men here who have but one standard,—that of right. The men here who are true to the principle which our country represents, and by which it is to live."
"What principle?"