"Then one drop of unfortunate blood would make the whole world unjust."
"That will do," he said. "If I let you go on you will preach me an abolition sermon."
I bowed and he sat down, drawing his chair near to the dying fire and placing his slippered feet against the chimney. He mused for a long time, and then he said, without looking at me. "I have been reading an old man's book, and it impresses upon me the glorious appreciation of youth. To be young and to place the proper estimate upon it—how magnificent!"
"But isn't there a danger in such early ripeness?" I asked.
"Sir Sage," he said, shifting his feet and crossing them. "Yes, there may be, and you give evidences of it."
Another silence fell, and the candle as well as the fire was dying. "Dan," he said, "I have done enough scanning and soon now I am going to take up the study of the law. You know that it is my ambition to be a great orator, and something within me says that I shall be. I talk to you as I could talk to no one else; with some degree of literal truth, you are a part of myself—I own you." A shadow fell black upon the wall and he looked round at the struggling candle. For a moment the light revived, and he continued: "I believe that one day I shall stand in the Senate, and the storm that rages within my breast will sweep over the land."
"The hope of every young Kentuckian," I ventured to say, determined not always to be a negro flatterer.
The light was nearly gone, but I saw his anxious face turn toward me.
"A streak of lie and a stripe of truth," he replied. "And why do all young Kentuckians have that hope? Because Kentucky has produced so many orators? Oh, I know that we don't take account of the failures. The failures come largely from the plow, from lack of advantages, but I have advantages, and I have fire and ability. Do you believe that?"