“‘That gal’s the bother of my life,’ said Mrs. Brown.  ’Mr. Brown, he was in New York when a ship come, and that gal’s father and mother must die of the ship-fever, and the gal was left, and Mr. Brown calculated she could be made to save us hiring, by teaching her a little.  She’s smart enough, but she’s the hard-headedest, obstinatest thing I ever see.  I can’t make nothin’ of her.  You might as well try to draw blood out of a turnip as to get any good out of her.’

“‘You got some good blood out of her,’ said I, ‘at any rate,’ for Mrs. Brown was wiping her hands, and the blood looked red and healthy enough; ‘but she is not a turnip, that’s one thing to be considered.’

“‘Well, Mrs. Brown, good evening,’ said Arthur.  ’I shall tell them at the South how you Northern people treat your white niggers.’

“‘I wish to the Lord,’ said Mrs. Brown, ’we had some real niggers.  Here I am sweatin, and workin, and bakin, all these hot days, and Brown he’s doin nothin from morning ’till night but reading Abolition papers, and tendin Abolition meetings.  I’m not much better than a nigger myself, half the time.’

“Now,” said Arthur, “Mr. Hubbard, I have been fortunate in my experience.  I have never seen a slave woman struck in my life, though I’ve no doubt such things are done; and I assure you when I saw Mrs. Brown run the risk of spoiling that pretty face for life, I wondered your laws did not protect ‘these bound gals,’ or ‘white niggers,’ as she calls them.”

“You see, Hubbard,” said Abel, “your philanthropy and Arthur’s is very contracted.  He only feels sympathy for a pretty white face, you for a black one, while my enlarged benevolence induces me to stand up for all female ‘phizmahoganies,’ especially for the Hottentot and the Madagascar ones, and the fair sex of all the undiscovered islands on the globe in general.”

“You don’t think, then,” said Mr. Hubbard, argumentatively, “that God’s curse is on slavery, do you?”

“In what sense?” asked Arthur.  “I think that slavery is, and always was a curse, and that the Creator intended what he said, when he first spoke of it, through Noah.”

“But, I mean,” said Mr. Hubbard, “that it will bring a curse on those who own slaves.”

“No, sir,” said Arthur, “God’s blessing is, and always has been on my father, who is a slaveholder; on his father, who was one; and on a good many more I could mention.  In fact, I could bring forward quite a respectable list who have died in their beds, in spite of their egregious sin in this respect.  There are Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Calhoun, Henry Clay, and not a few others.  In this case, the North, as has been said, says to her sister South, ’Stand aside, for I am holier than thou!’ that is, you didn’t need them, and got rid of them.”

“We were all born free and equal,” said Mr. Hubbard, impressively.

“Equal!” said Abel, “there is that idiot, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, across the street:  was he born equal with you?”