“It will be a great triumph for me,” said Mr. Garie.  “The old man prides himself on being able to detect evidences of the least drop of African blood in any one; and makes long speeches about the natural antipathy of the Anglo-Saxon to anything with a drop of negro blood in its veins.  Oh, I shall write him a glorious letter expressing my pleasure at his great change of sentiment, and my admiration of the fearless manner in which he displays his contempt for public opinion.  How he will stare!  I fancy I see him now, with his hair almost on end with disgust.  It will do him good:  it will convince him, I hope, that a man can be a gentleman even though he has African blood in his veins.  I have had a series of quarrels with him,” continued Mr. Garie; “I think he had his eye on me for Miss Clara, and that makes him particularly fierce about my present connection.  He rather presumes on his former great intimacy with my father, and undertakes to lecture me occasionally when opportunity is afforded.  He was greatly scandalized at my speaking of Emily as my wife; and seemed to think me cracked because I talked of endeavouring to procure a governess for my children, or of sending them abroad to be educated.  He has a holy horror of everything approaching to amalgamation; and of all the men I ever met, cherishes the most unchristian prejudice against coloured people.  He says, the existence of “a gentleman” with African blood in his veins, is a moral and physical impossibility, and that by no exertion can anything be made of that description of people.  He is connected with a society for the deportation of free coloured people, and thinks they ought to be all sent to Africa, unless they are willing to become the property of some good master.”

“Oh, yes; it is quite a hobby of his,” here interposed Mr. Winston.  “He makes lengthy speeches on the subject, and has published two of them in pamphlet form.  Have you seen them?”

“Yes, he sent them to me.  I tried to get through one of them, but it was too heavy, I had to give it up.  Besides, I had no patience with them; they abounded in mis-statements respecting the free coloured people.  Why even here in the slave states—­in the cities of Savanah and Charleston—­they are much better situated than he describes them to be in New York; and since they can and do prosper here, where they have such tremendous difficulties to encounter, I know they cannot be in the condition he paints, in a state where they are relieved from many of the oppressions they labour under here.  And, on questioning him on the subject, I found he was entirely unacquainted with coloured people; profoundly ignorant as to the real facts of their case.  He had never been within a coloured church or school; did not even know that they had a literary society amongst them.  Positively, I, living down here in Georgia, knew more about the character and condition of the coloured people of the Northern States, than he who lived right in the midst of them.  Would you believe that beyond their laundress and a drunken negro that they occasionally employed to do odd jobs for them, they were actually unacquainted with any coloured people:  and how unjust was it for him to form his opinion respecting a class numbering over twenty thousand in his own state, from the two individuals I have mentioned and the negro loafers he occasionally saw in the streets.”