One brave man here, a great “friend of freedom,” who, they falsely say, loves to be persecuted, and longs for martyrdom, and interprets everything that way, he described as a miller, who seems to court death in the flame.  I think he aimed at me in speaking of soft, harmless bugs which creep over your newspaper or book.  Many faces were turned to me as he repeated these lines.  I am sorry to say the piece was much applauded.  It has put back the cause of emancipation in College, I fear, a term.

The following introduction to another piece was written, and was read, at the same meeting, by a member of my own class.  I fear that there is a sly hit intended by the writer, which I do not discern, at somebody, or something, related to freedom.  This I suspected from the applause it excited on the part of those who I know are the most deadly foes we have to free institutions.  I obtained a copy of this introduction.  It will serve, at least, to show you, dear Aunty, what a variety of topics we have to excite our minds here in College.  You can exercise your discretion about letting uncle read it, as it is on a subject of some delicacy.  The writer says,—­

“I am collecting facts from our daily papers illustrating the Barbarism of Matrimony.  My list of wives poisoned, beaten, maimed for life by their husbands, and of divorces, cruel desertions, the effects on wives of intemperance in husbands, is truly fearful.  I make no question that there are some happy marriages.  But a relation which affords such peculiar opportunities for cruelty to women, must sooner or later disappear.  No doubt the time will come when marriage will be deemed a relic of barbarism, and a bridal veil be exhibited as one of the mock decorations of the unhappy victims.  Human nature in man is not good enough to be trusted with such a responsibility as the happiness of woman.  Let Bachelors of Arts, on our parchments, suggest to us our duty to aid, through our example, as well as by words, in breaking this dreadful yoke, bidding those innocent young women who are now, perhaps, fearfully looking at us as their future oppressors, to be forever free.  In the language of young Hamlet:  ’I say, we will have no more marriages.’”

* * * * *

Just before dark one evening, I was sitting in my room, meditating on the great theme which absorbs my thoughts.  My eye was caught by the bright bolt of my door-lock, the part of the bolt between the lock and the catch showing, beyond question, that the door was fastened.  Some one on the outside had turned a key upon me.

I had the self-possession to be quiet, for my mind had been calmed by reflecting, in that twilight hour, that now one more day of toil for the poor slaves was over.

But as I looked at the bolt, my attention was diverted by something near the top of the door, moving with a strange motion.  It was black; it opened and shut.  I drew toward it.  I found that it was the leg of a turkey, the largest that I ever saw.  It was held or fastened in the ventilator over the door, while some one on the outside was evidently pulling the tendons of the claw, making it open and shut.