"It's a pack of Yankee lies, sir," interrupted my uncle warmly.
Gordon flushed a little. "That's hardly argument, Mr. Lundy," he replied slowly. "You remind me of what Burke said of Samuel Johnson—he said Johnson's style of argument reminded him of a highwayman; if his pistol missed fire, he knocked you down with the butt end of it."
"What's that got to do with niggers?" enquired my uncle blankly.
"Nothing—just with the argument," answered Gordon. "I said I thought 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' impressed me as impartial—and you retorted it was Yankee lies. That's like calling Euclid a liar because you dissent from his proposition, as your great Lincoln said."
"He wasn't ours—and he isn't great," retorted uncle vigorously.
"Half of that may be true," Gordon answered in the most amiable tone. "But about the book—I'll state my position. Mrs. Stowe portrays three men, if I remember right, who had to do with slaves. Shelby, St. Clair, Legree, were the names, I think. Well, one of them, Legree, is depicted as a brute—but the other two were like fathers to their slaves. Now, if that isn't fair—two to one—I don't know what is," concluded Gordon placidly, "especially as you've just admitted yourself that the brutal type was always to be found, even if the exception."
I was growing nervous by this time, and with abundant cause. It was with a sense of hearty relief I heard Aunt Agnes hurrying towards the porch; and before the argument could further go, she blew in upon the scene with tidings of an invitation she had just received for me and Gordon for that very evening. I wasn't slow to make the most of the digression, and soon the ship of domestic peace was clear of the threatening rocks.
Yet I could see, all through the early evening, that the debate had left its impress upon Gordon. It was really wonderful how a question of this kind took hold of him; anything human, especially if connected with sorrow or injustice, seemed to kindle him as nothing else could do. More than once he harked back to it within the next hour or two when he and I were alone. "It's beyond my understanding," he broke out, "how any man—especially a Christian gentleman like your uncle—can defend an institution that made one man a slave of another."
"But they were good to them," I defended.
"Yet they were in bondage," was his terse reply; "and besides, Helen, you know they often had to sell them—even when they didn't want to. I've talked to coloured women on the streets here, who told me their children were sold away from them long years ago—and they've never seen them since. And they cried," he added, his voice taking what was almost a shrill note, plaintive with sympathy. "And I don't care if they did keep their slaves in luxury—-if they had clothed them in purple and fine linen and fanned them all day long—any institution that makes it possible for a child to be sold from his mother, it's—it's damnable," he declared passionately, "and neither God nor man could convince me to the contrary."