in her decrepitude, his imagination would have contained some other pictures than those in the lines which you quote.  Had there been a Mrs. Cowper, I fancy she would have been like this lady; and perhaps we should have seen Mr. Cowper acting the kind part of this lady’s husband toward a slave-mother and her babe, his ‘property,’ so called.  I lay awake here, last night, while you were writing, and thought it all over.  What were you writing about so long?  I wished that I had a pencil and paper near me.  Those English and French people who got rid of slavery as one gets rid of a bunion, know nothing about slavery mingled with our very life-blood.  How self-righteous they are!  Our people, too, are perpetually quoting what Thomas Jefferson said about slavery in his day.  Pray, has there been no progress?  Why are we not permitted to hear what Southern men, as good as Jefferson, now say about modern slavery?”

“My dear,” said I, “perhaps you are not fully qualified as yet to judge of this great subject in all its relations.  The greatest and wisest men are divided in opinion about it.”

“Great subject!” said she, “please let me interrupt you; there is but one side to it, I should judge, from reading our papers.  What do some of the ‘greatest and wisest men,’ on the other side, have to say for themselves?  Are they all ‘friends of oppression,’ ‘enemies of freedom,’ ‘minions of the slave-power,’ ‘dough-faces’?  Husband, I am thoroughly disgusted.  I have been compelled to have uncharitable feelings toward thousands of people like this Southern lady; I confess I have really hated them, as I hate men-stealers and pirates.  This letter has convinced me of my sin.  It is like the Gospel in its effect upon me.”

“But, my dear,” said I, “recollect that good people may be in great error, and we read, ’Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him.’  Now, to hold a fellow-being in bondage,—­how can it be otherwise than ’stupendous injustice’?”

“I wonder,” said she, “if Kate feels that she is in ‘bondage’ to this lady.  I wonder if she would not think it cruel, if her mistress should set her free.”

“But it is wrong,” said I, “to hold property in a human being, whether the bondman be in favor of it or not.”

“‘Property!’” said she.  “I should like to be such ‘property,’ if I were a black woman.  If it were wrong in the abstract,” said she, “it might not be in practice.”

“Oh,” said I, “what a pro-slavery idea that is! where did you learn it?”

“I learned it,” said she, “at our corn-husking, when the Squire read extracts from John Quincy Adams’s speech about China, in which he said that if China would not open her trade to the world, it would be right to make war upon her.  Now war is wrong, but circumstances sometimes make it right.  So with holding certain men in slavery, under certain circumstances.  I cannot believe that it is right to go and enslave whom we will; but the blacks being here, I can see that it may be the very best thing for all concerned that they should be owned.  This may be God’s way of having them governed and educated.”