“‘There was a subscription raised for them here. My brother Carl gave something toward it—not that he cared particularly for the young ladies, but because he had a strong desire to sell the gentleman from Louisiana. They were ransomed, and brought here, and put to school somewhere, and a vast fuss made about them—quite enough to spoil them, I’m afraid. And so ends that story. What a joke, to think of a man being worth just as much as a grand piano, and a little more than a pair of ponies!’
“Ashburner thought that Masters treated the whole affair too much as a joke.
“‘Tell me,’ said he, ‘if these people came to New York, or you met them traveling, would you associate with them on familiar terms?’
“‘Not with Mr. Bruin, certainly,’ replied Harry. ‘To give the devil his due, such a man is considered to follow an infamous vocation, even in his part of the country.’
“‘But the Honorable Secretary and the other gentlemen, who sell their men to work on the cotton plantations and their women for something worse?’
“‘H-m! A-h! Did you ever meet a Russian?—in your own country, I mean.’
“‘Yes, I met one at dinner once. I wont pretend to pronounce his name.’
“‘Did you go out of the way to be uncivil to him, because he owned serfs?’
“‘No, but I didn’t go out of my way to be particularly genial with him.’
“‘Exactly: the cases are precisely parallel. The Southerners are our Russians. They come up to the North to be civilized; they send their boys here to be educated; they spend a good deal of money here. We are civil to them, but not over genial—some of us, at least, are not.’