But she herself gave me my opportunity.  I was on the point of consenting, when she demanded, as a condition of her coming, that I discharge Julia, my late wife’s maid.  She was laboring under a misapprehension in regard to the girl, but I grasped at the straw, and did everything to foster her delusion.  I declared solemnly that nothing under heaven would induce me to part with Julia.  The controversy resulted in my permitting Polly to take the child, while I retained the maid.

Before Polly put this idea into my head, I had scarcely looked at Julia, but this outbreak turned my attention toward her.  She was a handsome girl, and, as I soon found out, a good girl.  My wife, who raised her, was a Christian woman, and had taught her modesty and virtue.  She was free.  The air was full of liberty, and equal rights, and all the abolition claptrap, and she made marriage a condition of her remaining longer in the house.  In a moment of weakness I took her away to a place where we were not known, and married her.  If she had left me, I should have fallen a victim to Polly Ochiltree,—­to which any fate was preferable.

And then, old friend, my weakness kept to the fore.  I was ashamed of this marriage, and my new wife saw it.  Moreover, she loved me,—­too well, indeed, to wish to make me unhappy.  The ceremony had satisfied her conscience, had set her right, she said, with God; for the opinions of men she did not care, since I loved her,—­she only wanted to compensate me, as best she could, for the great honor I had done my handmaiden,—­for she had read her Bible, and I was the Abraham to her Hagar, compared with whom she considered herself at a great advantage.  It was her own proposition that nothing be said of this marriage.  If any shame should fall on her, it would fall lightly, for it would be undeserved.  When the child came, she still kept silence.  No one, she argued, could blame an innocent child for the accident of birth, and in the sight of God this child had every right to exist; while among her own people illegitimacy would involve but little stigma.  I need not say that I was easily persuaded to accept this sacrifice; but touched by her fidelity, I swore to provide handsomely for them both.  This I have tried to do by the will of which I ask you to act as executor.  Had I left the child more, it might serve as a ground for attacking the will; my acknowledgment of the tie of blood is sufficient to justify a reasonable bequest.

I have taken this course for the sake of my daughter Olivia, who is dear to me, and whom I would not wish to make ashamed; and in deference to public opinion, which it is not easy to defy.  If, after my death, Julia should choose to make our secret known, I shall of course be beyond the reach of hard words; but loyalty to my memory will probably keep her silent.  A strong man would long since have acknowledged her before the world and taken the consequences; but, alas!  I am only myself, and the atmosphere I live in does not encourage moral heroism.  I should like to be different, but it is God who hath made us, and not we ourselves!