past the patrol. Jocko will open the street door for you when you start: and I want you to send me word, if you can, after you get to New-York, what kind of bonnets they're going to wear this summer."
"Dear girl!" murmured Bob, fondly, "I'll find out the style and mention it to one of our Generals, who will let you know by note, as soon as he arrives here."
"Dear Bob!—but I must go now. Is there anything I can send you to make you more comfortable?"
As they stood there facing each other, Mr. Bob Peters closed his right eye for an instant, and suffered the muscles of his month to relax, thereby expressing some want too deep for words.
"You shall have it," said the young girl, turning to leave the room. At the door she was met by Jocko, who entered as she passed out, for the ostensible purpose of removing the remains of the captive's recent surreptitious breakfast.
The sound of the maiden's light footsteps soon died away in the passage, like the vibrations of a high-strung instrument in a passage of music, and the two men stood alone together.
There they were—the White and the Black; the one a freeman in all save being deprived of his liberty; the other a slave in all save being unrestricted of his freedom. Who could tell what was working in the mind of each? Who should draw the line between those men, when all was dark for the white and a luckless wight was the black? Who should say that the white man was anything better than the black man, that the latter should bear the bonds of slavery—bonds
as hard to bear even as Confederate bonds? Look at inanimate nature. Is it not the White of an egg that bears the yolk? Then why should the white man turn the yoke altogether over to the black man? But I must refuse to follow out this great metaphysical question any further. The weather is too warm. I will leave it to the Awful and Unfathomable German Mind, which delights to toy heavily with the elephants of Thought.
"Mars'r," said Jocko, handing a folded paper to the fugitive prisoner, "dis was gub to me for you by my chile Efrum, dat b'longs to Missus Adams; and I hope, Mas'r, dat you will read um with fear an' trem'lin, for the Lor' is very good to let you lib in your great sins, Mars'r."
How beautiful, mon ami, is that strong spirit of piety we often find developed in the uncultivated, like the rich oyster found on the barren sea-shore. Taken in connection with the children of Ham, it is as mustard to a sandwich, for moving us to occasional tears.