“My dear,” said Mr. North, “do you know what a time there would be if the lady should bring Kate with her?”

“The good time coming!  I think it would be,” said his wife, “to see the Southern lady and her Kate under our roof.”

“Why,” Paid he, “we should all have to go to court?”

“Well, that would be interesting,” said she; “but for what?”

“Why,” said he, “you know that this is free soil:  Kate is a slave; she can have her freedom for nothing if she comes here.  Some of our Massachusetts gentlemen are as chivalrous and attentive to Southern colored people, as our good friend tells us Southern gentlemen are to a white woman:  a committee would wait on Kate, with an officer of the peace, and invite her to visit the court-house with them, to be presented with ‘freedom’; and Kate’s mistress must go with her, to show that she is not restraining Kate of her liberty.”

“Why,” said Mrs. North, “if I could not be allowed, in visiting Sharon Springs, to take Judith with me to give me my baths, because she is free, I should call it barbarism.  Who was that gentleman that broke his collar-bone and seat to you, husband, to get him a nurse?”

Mr. North said it was a student in a medical school, from the South.

“Did you find him a nurse?” said she.

“Yes,” he replied; “but he groaned and said, ’Mother wanted to send on my mammy that nursed me, but your laws will not allow her to come.  Now,’ said he, ’mammy will not tamper with your servants here, and entice them away, as free colored men might do to our slaves if they landed at the South from your vessels.  O, mammy,’ said he, ’if I had your ’arbs and your nursing, what a pleasure it would be to be sick.’”

“Poor fellow!” said Mrs. North.  “What did you say to him?”

“O,” said he, “I told him that we lived under different institutions; and that when we are among the Romans we must do as the Romans do.”

“Well,” said Mrs. North, “if all such prohibitions are not downright impertinence, then I will give up.”

“It’s the law of the land, here,” said her husband.

“Is there no ‘Higher Law’ in such a case?” said she. “‘Higher Law,’ I believe, is sometimes the rule in Massachusetts.”

“Some of our most estimable colored fellow-citizens would attend her,” said I, “and tempt her by their own prosperity and happiness in freedom, at the North, to cast in her lot with them and abandon her Southern home, her mistress, and her little charge, Susan; and her own little Cygnet’s grave.  They would send her, if she wished, free of charge, to Canada, and leave her there.  She could be perfectly free.”

“Now, what is all this for?” said Mrs. North.  “Do the people here really believe that Kate is ‘oppressed?’ that her mistress is a tyrant? that Kate is a victim to the ‘sum of all villanies?’ that she buffers an ‘enormous wrong?’ that her mistress does her a ‘stupendous injustice?’ If they wish for objects of charity, and will go with me, I will engage to supply them with ‘the oppressed’ in any quantity, with some of ’the down-trodden’ also.”