she wonders at herself so calm and happy.  I heard her yesterday calling at the stairs to a little lisping English waiting-maid, who cannot pronounce s:  “Judith,” said she, “did you not hear the parlor-bell?” Judith walked up, and said, “Mitthith North, lately you’ve rung tho eathy, that motht of the time I thought it mutht be a acthident, and didn’t come up at futht.  I thpect the wireth ith got ruthty.”  Mrs. North said nothing, but afterward, in relating the affair to me, she said she truly believed that it was owing to my stopping the papers.  For she could remember how often she went to the bell-rope saying to herself as she pulled it, “sum of all villanies!” then “enormous wrong,” with another pull, and then “stupendous injustice,” with another.  Several times she says Judith has rushed up to the parlor with “Ma’am, whath the matter! the bell rung three timth right off.”  She thinks that her nervous system will last longer without the papers than with them.  As she told me this, she was shutting down the lid of the piano for the night.  As it fell into its place, the strings set up a beautiful murmur.  “Oh, hear that!” said she; “how solemn it is!” “I suppose,” said I, “you would not have heard it, if those papers had been in the house.”  I shall not tell you, a bachelor, what she said and did.  I trust that her views on the great subject of freedom will get adjusted by and by; and I am debating with myself what papers to take, having been obliged, for my own edification, to become a subscriber to the reading-room.  There, however, I meet with a good many pro-slavery prints, and I am tempted to look into them; after which I frequently feel as though I should pull a bell-rope three times.  A.F.N.

CHAPTER III.

Morbid northern conscience.

                  “Heaven pities ignorance: 
  She’s still the first that has her pardon sign’d;
  All sins else see their faults; she’s, only, blind.”

Middleton:  No Help like a Woman’s.

[Accompanying note, from A. BETTERDAY Cumming to A. Freeman north.

My dear Mr. North,—­

With many thanks for your kindness and frankness, and with my warmest congratulations to Mrs. North for the pleasant effect which the Southern lady’s letter has had upon her, I send you another document, hoping that she will read it to you.  It will not be worth while for me to say anything about this production.  It purports to be from a young man in one of our New England literary institutions, whose aunt, with her husband, was residing at the South for the health of a niece, a sister to this young man;—­they being orphans.  The letter is so entirely in the same key with your feelings that you cannot fail to be interested.  Knowing that you love rare specimens in everything, I send you this as “the only one of its kind,” or as we say, “sui generis.”—­A.B.C.]