It is true, that the moral curse of slavery upon the habits of the people is not so easily removed, and that we do not behold as favorable a moral and educational condition of the West India Islands as could be desired.  But it should be remembered how large a share of the blame for this falls now upon the wealthier classes, who are opposed or indifferent to the education of the lower.  Even these evils are being gradually removed, and emancipation is establishing itself, not merely as a grand act of justice, wisely done, but as a successful moral and economical reform, whose fruits are to be seen in the good morals, industry, and increasing wealth of many happy communities.

* * * * *

A STORY OF TO-DAY.

PART VI.

It was later than Holmes thought:  a gray, cold evening.  The streets in that suburb were lonely:  he went down them, the new-fallen snow dulling his step.  It had covered the peaked roofs of the houses too, and they stood in listening rows, white and still.  Here and there a pale flicker from the gas-lamps struggled with the ashy twilight.  He met no one:  people had gone home early on Christmas eve.  He had no home to go to:  pah! there were plenty of hotels, he remembered, smiling grimly.  It was bitter cold:  he buttoned up his coat tightly, as he walked slowly along as if waiting for some one,—­wondering dully if the gray air were any colder or stiller than the heart hardly beating under the coat.  Well, men had conquered Fate, conquered life and love, before now.  It grew darker:  he was pacing now slowly in the shadow of a long low wall surrounding the grounds of some building.  When he came near the gate, he would stop and listen:  he could have heard a sparrow on the snow, it was so still.  After a while he did hear footsteps, crunching the snow heavily; the gate clicked as they came out:  it was Knowles, and the clergyman whom Dr. Cox did not like; Vandyke was his name.

“Don’t bolt the gate,” said Knowles; “Miss Howth will be out presently.”

They sat down on a pile of lumber near by, waiting, apparently.  Holmes went up and joined them, standing in the shadow of the lumber, talking to Vandyke.  He did not meet him, perhaps, once in six months; but he believed in the man, thoroughly.

“I’ve just helped Knowles build a Christmas-tree in yonder,—­the House of Refuge, you know.  He could not tell an oak from an arbor-vitae, I believe.”

Knowles was in no mood for quizzing.

“There are other things I don’t know,” he said, gloomily, recurring to some subject Holmes had interrupted.  “The House is going to the Devil, Charley, headlong.”

“There’s no use in saying no,” said the other; “you’ll call me a lying diviner.”

Knowles did not listen.

“Seems as if I was to go groping and stumbling through the world like some forsaken Cyclops with his eye out, dragging down whatever I touched.  If there was anything to hold by, anything certain!”