“A warm day,” said I.

“Yes, sir,” said he, a little impatiently, I thought, The sun was very hot, an August morning, no air stirring, well suited to make one think of toil and woe under our Southern skies.

“Have you ever been at the South?” said I, wiping my forehead.

“No, sir,” said he, picking out a knot in the snapper of his whip, evidently to hide his embarrassment while waiting to know the drift of my question.  The sight of his whip kindled in my soul new zeal for the poor slaves, knowing as I did how many of them were at that moment skipping in their tortures and striving to flee from the piercing lash.

“Your toil in the hot sun with your load, my dear sir,” said I, “is well fitted to impress you with the thought of the miseries under which four millions of your fellow-men are every day groaning in our Southern country.  I make no doubt that you are grateful for the blessings of freedom which we enjoy here at the North.  I wish to ask whether you are doing anything against oppression; whether you belong to any Association whose object is”—­

“What on airth did you stop me for,” said he, quite impatiently, and yet with a lingering gleam of respect, and with some hesitancy at any further rudeness of speech.

“My dear sir,” said I, “four millions of Southern slaves are this very hour groaning under sorrows which no tongue”—­

“You”—­(he hesitated a moment, and surveyed me from head to foot, and then broke out,)—­“putty-headed, white-birch-looking, nateral—­stoppin’ a load right near the crown of a hill, no gully in the road, such a day as this, and—­’Ged ehp,’”—­said he to his horses, as the stones under the wheels that moment began to give way; and then he drew his lash through one hand, with a most angry look.  I really thought that I should have to feel that lash.  The thought instantly nerved me:—­I’ll bear it! it’s for the slave; let me remember them, I might have added, that are whipped as whipped with them; but at that moment the horses had reached the hill-top, and the driver was by their side.

He called back, as he passed round the rear of his load to the nigh side of his team.  I caught only a few of his last words;—­“take your backbone for a for’ard X.”  I snapped my thumb and finger at him, though not lifting my arm from my side.  The human spinal column, with its vertebrae, for an axle-tree of a wagon!  And yet, I immediately thought, the poor negro’s back is truly “the for’ard X” of the great wagon of our American commerce.  But I let him depart.

Salutary impressions, I cannot question, dear Aunty, were made upon his mind.  He had heard some things which would occupy his thoughts in his solitary trudge on his way to Boston.  That thought comforted me as I was writhing a little on my way home, under his opprobrious epithets; for you know that I was always sensitive when addressed with reproachful words.