knee, with apple on which he had sprinkled arsenic, I questioned whether human nature were not about the same everywhere.  The theoretical right of a master, in certain cases, to put his slave to death, without judge or jury, is controlled by the self-interest of the owner who, of course, does not recklessly destroy his own property.  The slave-codes are no just exponent of the actual state of things in slavery.  For example,—­by law a master may not furnish his slave with less than a peck of corn a week.  This has a barbarous look.  But to see the slaves feasting on the fat of the land you certainly would not be reminded of the “peck of corn,” except by contrast.  There must be some legal standard, below which if an inhuman master falls in providing for his servant, he can be prosecuted.  Hence the “peck of corn.”  By the will of an eminent citizen at the North, establishing courses of lectures for all coming time, the pay of each lecturer is to be determined by the market value, at the time, of a bushel of wheat.  This is a fair standard for the unit of measure.

In arguing with one who should insist that the abuses in slavery are a reason for breaking up the institution in this country, I should feel justified in maintaining that there are as many instances of a happy relation between, master and servant in the Southern country as there are happy marriages in the same number of households anywhere.  Let there be four millions of an inferior, dependent race mixed up with a superior race, anywhere on earth, and of course, while human nature is what it is, there will be hardships, wrong-doings, oppressions, and barbarisms.  At the North, we get scraps of anguish in the newspapers relating to hardships at the South; and many pore upon them till they make themselves half-crazed.  All the circumstances serving to qualify the narrative are sometimes withheld, and the stories are told with dramatic art.  There is sorrow enough everywhere to furnish material for such kind of writing, especially to those who make it their calling, or find it for their interest, to publish it.  But the goings-on of life, at the South, with its alleviations and comforts, the practical mitigations of an oppressive system, theoretical evils qualified by difference of color, constitution, and history, and all the goodness and mercy which Christianity and a well-ordered state of society provide, we at the North do not see.  Nor do our people consider that running away, and the complaints of the slaves, are partly chargeable to the discontent and restlessness of human nature; but we seem to take it for granted that every one who flees from the South is as though he had escaped from a prison-ship.

While at the North, I remember reading an article, signed with initials, in a prominent Massachusetts magazine, which contained this sentence:  “Arsenic is universally in possession of the negroes; but it is considered the part of wisdom, where families are poisoned, that the fact should be kept as secret as possible.”  This was brought very powerfully to my mind one day on passing through King Street, in Charleston, and seeing for a painted sign over an apothecary’s shop, a tall, benevolent-looking negro, in his shirt sleeves, behind a golden mortar, with the pestle in his hands, as though at work.