“O dear sir,” said he, “liberty is a priceless boon; liberty”—­

“Liberty to what?” said I.

“Why,” said he, “liberty not to be sold, nor to be beaten, nor to be subject to the wicked passions of a master.”

“Would you rather,” said I, “have your daughter a servant in a Southern family, brought up as a playmate with the children, a sharer in many of their gifts, a partner with their parents, as the children grew up, in the pride and joy of the parents, an honored member of the wedding party when a daughter is married, one of the principal mourners when the bride departs, identified with the history of the family, provided for in the will, a support guaranteed to her by law in sickness and old age, and that, too, not in a pauper establishment, but in her owner’s home, and when the parents die, if she survives, taken by some branch of the family or neighbor from regard to her and to them; her moral and religious character improved under their training, a respectable standing in society conferred upon her by her connection with them, her religious privileges sacredly secured to her, any insult redressed as though it were the family’s personal affair; she a partaker of their food and of all their comforts, and followed to her grave with respect and love; or, for the sake of ‘priceless liberty,’ ’heaven’s best gift to man,’ would you prefer to see her seated under the iron fence of a park, an old umbrella tied to the pickets for her shelter, and she, in rain and sunshine, selling ‘Old Dan Tucker,’ ‘Jim Crow, Illustrated,’ and pea-nuts, and sleeping you know not where?  Which lot would you choose for a child?  Which is best for this world and the next?  In one case, she is ‘owned,’ she is ‘a slave;’ and in the other, she is a free woman.”

“You have no right,” said he, with some warmth, “to take the best condition in slavery, and the very worst in freedom, and compel me to choose.”

“‘Best condition in slavery!’” said I; “is there any ‘best’ in being a slave, in not being free?  Does it admit of degrees?  Is not being ‘owned’ such a curse, such an unmixed iniquity in its essence, that to compare its best estate with the worst in freedom, is like comparing the best devil with the most inferior saint?  Is not a devil’s nature incapable of comparison as good, better, best, with anything which is not, in its nature, devilish?  According to your conversation just now, it seemed as though being ‘owned’ always implied an unmitigated transgression; and now when I inquire whether you would prefer degradation to the iniquity of being ‘owned’ in comfort and usefulness, respectability and happiness, you shrink from the question.  If freedom in the abstract is the best thing under the sun, of course you will prefer it to everything else.  No happy condition, no happy prospect for this life, and the life to come can, in your view, make being ‘a slave,’ as you call it, capable of being compared with this abstract privilege of being