many things, even men’s minds and souls.  You would like to be a planter, I know you would:  who would not, seeing how we live?  Here is the Elder, as happy a fellow as you’ll find in forty.  He can be as jolly as an Englishman over a good dinner:  he can think with anybody, preach with anybody!” Touching the Elder on the shoulder, he smiles, and with an insinuating leer, smooths his beard.  “I am at your service,” replies the Elder, folding his arms.

“I pay him to preach for my nigger property,-I pay him to teach them to be good.  He preaches just as I wants him to.  My boys think him a little man, but a great divine.  You would like to hear the Elder on Sunday; he’s funny then, and has a very funny sermon, which you may get by heart without much exertion.”  The young man seems indifferent to the conversation.  He had not been taught to realise how easy it was to bring religion into contempt.

“Make no grave charges against me, Marston; you carry your practical jokes a little too far, Sir.  I am a quiet man, but the feelings of quiet men may be disturbed.”  The Elder speaks moodily, as if considering whether it were best to resent Marston’s trifling sarcasm.  Deacon Rosebrook now interceded by saying, with unruffled countenance, that the Elder had but one thing funny about him,-his dignity on Sundays:  that he was, at times, half inclined to believe it the dignity of cogniac, instead of pious sentiment.

“I preach my sermon,-who can do more?” the Elder rejoins, with seeming concern for his honour.  “I thought we came to view the plantation?”

“Yes, true; but our little repartee cannot stop our sight.  You preach your sermon, Elder,—­that is, you preach what there is left of it.  It is one of the best-used sermons ever manufactured.  It would serve as a model for the most stale Oxonian.  Do you think you could write another like it?  It has lasted seven years, and served the means of propitiating the gospel on seven manors.  Can they beat that in your country?” says Marston, again turning to the young Englishmam, and laughing at the Elder, who was deliberately taking off his glasses to wipe the perspiration from his forehead.

“Our ministers have a different way of patching up old sermons; but I’m not quite sure about their mode of getting them,” the young man replies, takes Deacon Rosebrook’s arm, and walks ahead.

“The Elder must conform to the doctrines of the South; but they say he bets at the race-course, which is not an uncommon thing for our divines,” rejoins the Deacon, facetiously.

The Elder, becoming seriously inclined, thinks gentlemen had better avoid personalities.  Personalities are not tolerated in the South, where gentlemen are removed far above common people, and protect themselves by the code duello.  He will expose Marston.

Marston’s good capon sides are proof against jokes.  He may crack on, that individual says.

“My friend,” interposed the Elder, “you desired me to preach to your niggers in one style and for one purpose,-according to the rule of labour and submission.  Just such an one as your niggers would think the right stripe, I preached, and it made your niggers wonder and gape.  I’ll pledge you my religious faith I can preach a different-”