One white boy cried to another across a street, “Come along, it’s most time to be in school.”  The other answered, in a petulant tone, “I a’n’t going to school.”  A tall, white-headed negro was passing; his black surtout nearly touched the ground; he had on his arm a very nice market-basket, covered with a snow-white napkin, and in his right hand a long cane.  Hearing what the last boy said, he came to a full stand, put down his basket, clasped his long cane with both hands, and brought it down on the brick sidewalk with three quick raps, and then a rap at each of these points of admiration:  “What! what! what!” said he, drawing himself up to express surprise, and calling out with magisterial voice; “Go to school! my son! go to school! and larn! a heap!” the cane making emphasis at every expression.  The white boy retreated under the impression of a well-deserved, though kind, rebuke.  He did not call the old man “nigger,” nor in any way insult him.

But here is an incident of a different kind.

Standing to talk with a man who had charge of my baggage, in the passage-way between the baggage-room and the colored passengers’ apartment.  I saw a white man with a pert, flurried manner and coarse look ascend the steps of the cars, and behind him a tall graceful black man, a little older than the other, with signs of gentleness and dignity in his appearance.  As he stooped and turned, his air and carriage would have commanded attention anywhere.  The white man, seeing him enter the wrong door, cried out to him with an impudent voice, ordered him back, pointed him to the proper room, and told him to go in there and make himself “oneasy,” with a laugh at his own attempt at inaccurate talk as he cast a glance at some white men standing by.  The black man was his slave.  The natural and proper order of things was reversed in their relation to each other.

I looked at the black man as he took his seat, and, without being observed, I kept my eye on his face.  He cast his eye out of the window, as though to relieve a struggle of emotions, but a calm expression settled down upon his features.

A Southern gentleman, a slave-holder, witnessing the scene with me, said,—­

“Disgusting!  There, madam, you have one of the great evils of slavery,—­irresponsible power in the hands of men who are not fit to be intrusted with authority over others.  No man, I sometimes think, ought to be allowed to hold slaves till he has submitted to examination as to character, or brings certificates of a good disposition.  I know that man.  His father was from ——­ [a New England State.] He is what we call a torn-down character.  His neighbors all”—­but the signal was given for starting, and the conversation was broken off.

My first thought was, How glad I would be to set that man free from such bondage!  The next thought was, Where would I send him to be free from “the power of the dog?” I had been reading, in a Boston paper, a lecture delivered in Boston, by a distinguished “friend of the slave,” against Mr. Webster and Mr. Choate, before an “immense audience.”  I thought, How much better it is to be a Christian slave, even to this master, than to sit in the seat of the scornful, applauding such a lecture!