And taking her parasol, she went out, leaning on her husband’s arm.

“So you are an Abolitionist?” said Mr. Blumenthal, as they stopped near their host.

Mr. Bright tossed his hat on a bush, and, leaning on his hoe, sang in a stentorian voice:  “I am an Abolitionist; I glory in the name.—­There,” said he, laughing, “I let out all my voice, that the Deacon might hear.  He can pray the loudest; but I reckon I can sing the loudest.  I’ll tell you what first made me begin to think about slavery.  You see I was never easy without I could be doing something in the musical way, so I undertook to teach singing.  One winter, I thought I should like to run away from Jack Frost, and I looked in the Southern papers to see if any of ’em advertised for a singing-master.  The first thing my eye lighted on was this advertisement:—­

“Ran away from the subscriber a stout mulatto slave, named Joe; has light sandy hair, blue eyes, and ruddy complexion; is intelligent, and will pass himself for a white man.  I will give one hundred dollars’ reward to whoever will seize him and put him in jail.’

“‘By George!’ said I, ’that’s a description of me.  I didn’t know before that I was a mulatto.  It’ll never do for me to go there.’  So I went to Vermont to teach.  I told ’em I was a runaway slave, and showed ’em the advertisement that described me.  Some of ’em believed me, till I told ’em it was a joke.  Well, it is just as bad for those poor black fellows as it would have been for me; but that blue-eyed Joe seemed to bring the matter home to me.  It set me to thinking about slavery, and I have kept thinking ever since.”

“Not exactly such a silent thinking as the apothecary’s famous owl, I judge,” said Mrs. Blumenthal.

“No,” replied he, laughing.  “I never had the Quaker gift of gathering into the stillness, that’s a fact.  But I reckon even that ’pothecary’s owl wouldn’t be silent if he could hear and understand all that Betsey has told me about the goings-on down South.  Before I married her, she went there to teach; but she’s a woman o’ feeling, and she couldn’t stand it long.  But, dear me, if I believed Deacon Steal’em’s talk, I should think it was just about the pleasantest thing in the world to be sold; and that the niggers down South had nothing ’pon earth to do but to lick treacle and swing on a gate.  Then he proves it to be a Divine institution from Scripture, chapter and verse.  You may have noticed, perhaps, that such chaps are always mighty well posted up about the original designs of Providence; especially as to who’s foreordained to be kept down.  He says God cussed Ham, and the niggers are the descendants of Ham.  I told him if there was an estate of Ham’s left unsettled, I reckoned ’t would puzzle the ’cutest lawyer to hunt up the rightful heirs.”

“I think so,” rejoined Mr. Blumenthal, smiling; “especially when they’ve become so mixed up that they advertise runaway negroes with sandy hair, blue eyes, and ruddy complexion.”