"'Now,' said I, 'why not apply this,—perhaps you were intending to do so,—and say that society at the North is generally like our whortleberry pastures in autumn, which pleased you so much, with here and there a fungus, made by the sting of radicalism.'
"A planter's Northern wife said, 'I should like to move the adoption of that simile.'
"'We will have it so,' said the Judge to me, 'if the lady and you tell us that we must.'
"'A fungus,' said I, 'gets more attention from one half of the people who go into the woods, than all the pure and beautiful garniture of the pastures.'
"The ladies of our company having been rallied for not having done their part in the conversation, and also, of course, having been complimented for keeping silence so long, the wife of one of the planters, a Northern lady, made this remark that considering how God, in his providence, had made such provision for the welfare of the human family through slavery in our land, and, in doing it, had shown mercy and salvation to so many hundreds of thousands of Africans, she thought it both ungrateful and narrow-minded in people anywhere to confine all their thoughts to the incidental evils of the slaves. She said that in the North she was not an abolitionist, but on coming to the South and finding things so different from that which her fancy had pictured, she had concluded to be very charitable toward the most of her Northern friends who she said were no more in the dark than she herself had been all her days, from reading newspapers and tales which had concealed one whole side of slavery from the view of Northern people. She added that she preferred life at the North without the blacks, but had found more disinterested benevolence toward them in one year at the South than she had charity to believe existed in the hearts of all the good people at the North toward them, counting in even the professional benevolence of the 'friends of the slave.'
"After refreshments, the pastor was called upon to read the Scriptures, and to offer prayer. He read the fifteenth chapter of Revelation. Never can I forget the impression which one of the verses in that chapter made upon me, in connection with some of the thoughts awakened by our conversation about the sovereignty of God as displayed in his dark and awful dispensations towards races, nations, and men: 'And the seven angels came out of the temple, having the seven plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles.' 'Those who are in any way associated with the administration of God's great judgments towards their fellow-men,' said he, 'have need of special purity; and their honor should be like the untarnished gold.'
"This pastor told me, during the repast, that one day, returning suddenly from his study in the church just after breakfast, to the house of one of the gentlemen present, with whom he lived, and who was one of the wealthiest men in the South, and passing through the parlor to get a book, he found the room darkened, and the lady of the house kneeling in prayer with her servants. He of course withdrew at once, but he learned afterward from one of the 'slaves,' that it was the lady's daily custom. He often thought of that incident when reading Northern religious newspapers and noticing their lamentations over 'slave-holding professors.'"
* * * * *
So much for my Southern visit.
Mrs. North said that in our next conversation she would suggest that we consider the relation of Christianity to Slavery. I told her that I had some night thoughts on that subject, which I would with pleasure submit, at another time.