“’After service the good brother said, “I suppose you referred in your prayer to my praying against the South, as you call it.  Well,” said he, confidentially, “the truth is, some of our people make this thing their religion, and they will not abide a man who does not pray against slavery.”  Some gentlemen, with their ladies, stopped to speak with me.  One shook me by the hand most cordially.  “We are glad to see our good Southern brethren,” said he; “thankful to hear you preach so, and pray so, too,” said he, with an additional shake and a significant look, while the rest were equally cordial with their assent.  One of the gentlemen took me home with him.  “This is most of it politics,” said he, “and newspaper trade, this anti-slavery feeling.  The people generally are not fanatics; they are kind and humane, and their sensibilities are touched by tales of distress.”—­“Especially Southern,” said I.  “Last eve I read in your papers four outrages which happened within fifteen miles of this city, and two in your city, which equalled, to say the least, in barbarity anything that ever comes to my knowledge among our people.”

“’The next Sabbath, as I have since learned, my good brother was very comprehensive, discriminating, and impartial in his supplications.  He really distinguished between those at the South who “oppress” their fellow-men, and those who “remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.”  But,’ said the pastor, ’the most of those who use that latter expression at the North really think the Apostle had slaves, as a class, in mind.  I have no such belief.  I suppose that he referred to persecuted Christians, suffering imprisonment for their religion, and to all afflicted persons.

“‘My landlord said to me,’ he continued, ’"They tell us you are afraid of free discussion at the South, that you are afraid to have your slaves hear some things, lest it should excite them to insurrection.  How is this?”

“’I told him that the slaves, being the lower order of society with us, were not capable of so discriminating in that which promiscuous strangers should see fit to say to them as to make it safe to have them listen to every harangue or to every one who should set himself up to teach.  “Of course,” said I, “there are liabilities and dangers in our state of society.  We must use prudence and caution.  We have some loose powder in our magazine.  No one denies this.  What if one who was rebuked for carrying an open lamp into the magazine of a ship, should reproach the captain with being ‘an enemy to the light,’ and as ’loving darkness rather than light’?”