Mr. Grant would excuse ’em for sending it.’  So there were deposited on the breakfast-table, ‘big hominy’ in one or two shapes, rare fish, puff-muffins, and several dishes which called for Jack’s interpretations.  ’And Master says, shall he send the carriage round for you this forenoon? and he will call himself.’  The evening talk was interrupted by a black woman, all smiles, bearing a waiter of ice-cream and other refreshments, from another house; and so the visit was a succession of surprises from families who, at the South, count each other’s guests their own.  Mr. Grant was a strong anti-secessionist, and he spent much breath in arguing with the people in private.  On his return to his room, one day, he found a glass dish on the table, filled with japonicas, camellias, roses, and other early flowers, with the card of a married lady,—­with whom he had had a debate,—­inscribed, ’From the hottest of the Secessionists.’  He seems modified in his views a little about ‘the sum of all villanies,’ since his return.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. North, “and the people here explain it by saying, ’O, he was feted, and flattered.’

“Yes,” she continued, “some of our people will sacrifice their confidence in man or angel, rather than believe anything good about slavery.”

I said to her, “Add the Bible to those witnesses, Mrs. North.”

“Husband,” said she, “please reach me that long, thin, brown-covered book on the what-not.”  She then read an extract from the sixty-third page; it was a book by one now deceased, called, “Experience as a Minister”: 

“I had not been long a minister, before I found this worship of the Bible as a fetish hindering me at every step.  If I declared the Constancy of Nature’s Laws, and sought therein great argument for the Constancy of God, all the miracles came and held their mythologic finger up.  Even Slavery was ‘of God,’ for the divine statutes in the Old Testament admitted the principle that man might own a man, as well as a garden or an ox, and provided for the measure.  Moses and the Prophets were on its side; and neither Paul of Tarsus, nor Jesus of Nazareth, uttered a direct word against it.”

* * * * *

“But here is the sun!” said I.

“We are all more cheerful,” said Mrs. North, “than we were when he left us; for we have been able to converse on a trying and perplexing subject with good feelings.”

“Now,” said I, “here is the Southern lady’s letter, which has given occasion to all our conversation.”

“It has also introduced us,” said Mr. North, “to that goose, Gustavus, and to his good aunt.”

“What shall I say to the Southern lady,” said I, “if I write to her father?”

“Tell her,” said Mrs. North, “that if she comes to the North she must come directly to our house and make it her home.  If you will allow me, I will put a note into your envelope to that effect.  I shall beg her to bring Kate with her.  Wouldn’t I love to see Kate!”