'Pretty well, Aunty; pretty well. Have a seat.' And the Colonel helped her to one of the chairs that were brought for us, with as much tenderness as he would have shown to an aged white lady.

The 'exercises,' which had been suspended for a moment, recommenced, and the old negress entered into them as heartily as the youngest present. A song from Cato followed the dance, and then about twenty 'gentleman and lady' darkies joined, two at a time, in a half 'walk-round' half breakdown, which the Colonel told me was what suggested the well-known 'white-nigger' dance and song of Lucy Long. Other performances succeeded, and the whole formed a scene impossible to describe. Such uproarious jollity, such full and perfect enjoyment, I had never seen in humanity, black or white. The little nigs, only four or five years old, would rush into the ring and shuffle away at the breakdowns till I feared their short legs would come off; while all the darkies joined in the songs, till the branches of the old pines above shook as if they too had caught the spirit of the music. In the midst of it, the Colonel said to me, in an exultant tone,—

'Well, my friend, what do you think of slavery now?'

'About the same that I thought yesterday. I see nothing to change my views.'

'Why, are not these people happy? Is not this perfect enjoyment?'

'Yes; just the same enjoyment that aunty's pigs are having; don't you hear them singing to the music? I'll wager they are the happier of the two.'

'No; you are wrong. The higher faculties of the darkies are being brought out here.'

'I don't know that,' I replied. 'Within the sound of their voices, two of their fellows—victims to the inhumanity of slavery—are lying dead, and yet they make Sunday 'hideous' with wild jollity, while they do not know but Sam's fate may be theirs to-morrow.'

Spite of his genuine courtesy and high breeding, a shade of displeasure passed over the Colonel's face as I made this remark. Rising to go, he said, a little impatiently, 'Ah, I see how it is; that d—— Garrison's sentiments have impregnated even you. How can the North and the South hold together when even moderate men like you and me are so far apart?'

'But you,' I rejoined, good-humoredly, 'are not a moderate man. You and Garrison are of the same stripe, both extremists. You have mounted one hobby, he another; that is all the difference.'