me to acquire a habit that cleaves to me to this day.  But little did I dream, dear Aunty, when I padded along like a straight footed animal in the water, instead of having the free use of my open palms to aid me in walking, that I was acquiring a habit to be to me an inlet of torture in behalf of our manacled four millions, whose hands feel the galling bonds of slavery.  I take it joyfully, because it is all for the slave.

The day that I came home from my two interviews and efforts just related, a pro-slavery student, a Senior, invited me into his room.  He is exceedingly kind and generous, though, I am sorry to say it, a friend of oppression.  He gave me a splendid apple, the first which I had seen for the season.  He dusted my coat with his feather-duster, and he even dusted my boots.  He asked me how far I had been walking.  I told him all which I had said and done, thinking that it would profitably remind him of the great subject.  He roared with laughter.  “Three cheers for Gustavus;” “isn’t that rich;”—­waving, all the while, the feather-duster, and breaking out with fresh peals, as I related one thing after another.  The noise which he made brought in several of the students from neighboring rooms, and he related my stories to them as they stood with their thumbs and fingers holding open their text-books at the places where they were studying.  They were a curious looking set, in their dressing-gowns, slippers, and smoking-caps; and the most of them, unfortunately, happened to be pro-slavery, and advocates of oppression; by which I mean, not in favor of my mode of viewing and treating the subject of slavery.  One of them was so amused and excited that he lost all self-control.  He threw down his book, caught me with his two hands about the waist, and tickled me so that I fell upon the floor.  Then they raised a shout.  We have cool nights here, sometimes, in the warmest weather, and we keep, on the foot-boards of our beds, cotton comforters, called delusions, because they are so downy and light.  Two of the students took the Senior’s comforter and laid it on me; then four of them sat down, one on each corner, to keep me underneath.  I have told you that it was a sultry August day.  I thought that I should smother.  I told them so, as well as my choked voice would allow; but one of them said, in a soft, meek tone, as I writhed in distress, “Hush, Gustavus, lie still; you are certainly laboring under a delusion.”  This was all the more painful from its being so cruelly true, in a literal sense, while I knew that they had reference to my views with regard to freedom, in the word “delusion.”  What sustained me in those moments, dear Aunty?  It was not that I had myself stood by when this trick was played on Freshmen, and encouraged it by my actions; no, a higher and holier power than conscience of wrong-doing wrought upon me in those moments.  Oh, I thought, the very cotton which fills this comforter, was cultivated by the hand of a slave.  And shall I complain at being nearly smothered by it, when I remember what an incubus slavery is to the poor creature who gathered this cotton, and what an incubus it is to our unhappy land?  I was delivered at last from my load, because my tormentors were tired of their sport.  Would that there were some prospect that they who load cruel burdens on the slave were increasingly tired of their work!