The next morning, just as Mr. Weston had finished his paper, Bacchus came in with a pair of boots, shining astonishingly.  “I believe,” said Mr. Weston, “I won’t put them on yet, our ladies have not come down to breakfast, and its hardly time, for it is but half-past nine o’clock; I think it must have been morning when they came home.”

“Yes sir,” said Bacchus; “they aint awake yet, Aunt Marthy tells me.”

“Well, let them sleep.  I have breakfasted, and I will sit here and enjoy this good fire, until they come.”

Bacchus lingered, and looked as if he could not enjoy any thing that morning.

“Any thing the matter, Bacchus?” said Mr. Weston.

“Well,” said Bacchus, “nothin more I ’spose than what I had a right to expect of ’em.  Simon’s got to go.  I done all I could for him, but it aint nothin, after all.”

“What could you do?” said Mr. Weston.

“Well, master, I was nigh asleep last night, when all at once I thought ’bout dis here Abolition gentleman, Mr. Baker, that boards long wid us.  Now, thinks I, he is a mighty nice kind of man, talks a heap ’bout God and the Gospel, and ’bout our duty to our fellow-creaturs.  I know’d he had a sight of money, for his white servant told me he was a great man in Boston, had a grand house thar, his wife rode in elegant carriages, and his children has the best of every thing.  So, I says to myself, he aint like the rest of ’em, he don’t approve of stealing, and lying, and the like o’ that; if he thinks the Southern gentlemen oughter set all their niggers free, why he oughter be willin to lose just a little for one man; so I went straight to his room to ask him to buy Simon.”

“That was very wrong, Bacchus,” said Mr. Weston, sternly.  “Don’t you know your duty better than to be interfering in the concerns of these people?  I am excessively mortified.  What will this gentleman think of me?”

“Nothin’, master,” said Bacchus.  “Don’t be oneasy.  I told him I come to ax him a favor on my own ‘sponsibility, and that you didn’t know nothin’ about it.  Well, he axed me if I wanted a chaw of tobacco.  ‘No sir,’ says I, ’but I wants to ax a little advice.’  ‘I will give you that with pleasure,’ says he.

“‘Mr. Baker,’ says I, ’I understands you think God made us all, white and colored, free and equal; and I knows you feels great pity for de poor slaves that toils and frets in de sun, all their lives like beasts, and lays down and dies like beasts, clean forgot like ’em too.  I heard you say so to a gentleman at de door; I thought it was mighty kind of you to consider so much ’bout them of a different color from your own.  I heard you say it was de duty of de gentlemen of de South to set their slaves free, if it did make ’em poor, kase Jesus Christ, he made hisself poor to set us all free.  Warn’t dat what you said, sir?’

“‘Exactly,’ says he.  ‘I didn’t know you had such a good memory.’