"But, please," said Mrs. North, "let it be published. Add to it the incident of the Southern lady nursing the sick babe of a slave."
"O my dear," said her husband, "that would create a false impression. It would be a pro-slavery tract. It would abate Northern zeal against the 'sum of all villanies.' Something should go forth with such representations to correct their influence in the Free States. What would become of the cause of freedom should such stories make their impression upon the minds of our people?"
"You might," said I, "make a heading of an auction-block, or slave-coffle; add the last pattern of a slave-driver's whip; picture a panting fugitive on his way to the North; give us a ship's hold, with a black boy just detected among the stowage. You would thus, perhaps, keep these beautiful, touching illustrations of loving-kindness in slave-holders from having the least effect."
"It is very important," said he, seriously, "to keep up a just abhorrence of slavery here at the North, because"—
"Excuse me," said I, "but what do you mean by an abhorrence of slavery?"
"Why," said he, "is not the Christian world agreed that 'slavery is the sum of all villanies'?"
"By no means, in the United States," said I; "you might with as real truth say that here slavery is the sum of all the loving-kindnesses."
"Is not that letter of the Southern lady to her father," said he, "as rare a thing almost as a white crow?"
"O husband," said Mrs. North, "what an opinion you must have of Southern society!"
"Is not Gustavus," said I, "a perfect representative of the North, on the subject of slavery? Does not ultra anti-slavery find or make everybody, as the Aunt says, either fierce or flat?"