But we never hear anything quoted from the Bible on the subject but “break every yoke!” “let the oppressed go free!” “undo the heavy burdens!” I was telling a slave-holder of the frequency with which we hear these expressions in public prayer.  “I could join in every one of them,” said he; “I am for breaking every yoke, South and North, unbinding every heavy burden, and destroying every form of oppression.  But they must be actual, not theoretical, nor imaginary.”

This gentle slave in the cars, we will suppose, refuses opportunities to escape, but complies with the exhortations of the New Testament, “enduring grief, suffering wrongfully.”  His master is at last touched by his meekness, his “not answering again.”  I should relate only that which I know to have happened, should I say, that one day this master is filled with distress on account of sin.  He goes out into the cotton-field and finds Jacob.

“Jacob,” he says, “I am a great sinner.  Jacob, I feel that I am sinking into hell.  Jacob, pray for me.  I mean to turn about, if I live.”

“Dats jest what I’ve sought de Lord for, massa, dis six months coming New Year.  Let’s go up into de loft; it’s whar I’ve wrastled for you in prayer.”

He leads the way.  The floor of the loft is covered with cotton-seed.  A wheelbarrow is in the middle of the floor.  Jacob takes off his jacket, and with it brushes the cotton-seed away from one side of the wheelbarrow, lays the jacket down for his master to kneel upon, and goes to the other side.  Like Jacob at Peniel, he has power over the angel, and prevails; he weeps and makes supplication unto him.  The master breaks out in prayer.  He rises and says,—­

“Jacob, forgive me if I’ve been unkind to you; I’ve seen that you are a Christian; now if you want to leave me for anybody else, say so.”

“Thank you, massa; only sarve de Lord with gladness for all de good things he has done for you, and I’ll sarve you de same.  Please go home and tell missis; she told me to pray for you; ’twill finish up her joy.”

This is better than running away and going to Canada.  Those Christians who send the Gospel to the South by missionaries and religious tracts, to promote such scenes as this, do a better work than though they withheld missionaries and tracts from one half of the nation, and called it “Standing up for Jesus.”

I am sometimes inclined to put down all that I see and hear, good and bad, and publish a book to satisfy my truly candid but mistaken friends at the North as to the real truth on this subject.  But I have in mind the way in which similar works have already been received and treated by an unreasoning, passionate North.  I have amused myself sometimes in imagining what certain writers would say to some of the incidents which I have related in this letter.  Let me attempt to show you the spirit and manner of our Northern reviewers when one ventures to state favorable things