“But do the laws recognize them?”

“Yes, tacitly; the testimony of the slaves themselves is not received as evidence.”

“Why do a people that call their county a refuge for the down-trodden nations of Europe suffer such abominations?”

“Well, according to themselves, it is entirely a question of the almighty dollar.  If there were no slaves, the swamps and morasses of the south could not be cultivated.  It has been found that the negro will dance, and sing, and starve, but he will not work in the fields when free.  Besides, they assert, that the slaves are generally well cared for, and that it is only a few detestable masters that beat them cruelly.”

“Then, at all events, dollars are preferred to humanity by the United States men, in spite of their vaunted emblems—­liberty and equality.”

“Quite so.  In all matters of internal policy, the dollar reigns supreme.”

“Admitting,” continued Frank, “that the evils of slavery may exist in a section of the American Union, and amongst the barbarous hordes of Russia, these evils are trifling in comparison with others that stain the annals of antiquity.  We are told that a hundred and twenty persons applied to Otho to be rewarded for killing Galba.  That so many men should contend for the honor of premeditated murder, is sufficiently characteristic of the epoch.  There was then no corruption, no brutal passion, that had not its temple and its high priest.  In the midst of all this wickedness and vice there appeared a man, poor and humble, who accomplished what no man ever did before, and what no man will ever do again—­he founded a moral and eternal civilization.  Judaism and the religion of Zoroaster were overthrown.  The gods of Tyre and Carthage were destroyed.  The beliefs of Miltiades and of Pericles, of Scipio and Seneca, were disavowed.  The thousands that flocked annually to worship the Eleusinian Ceres ceased their pilgrimage.  Odin and his disciples have all perished.  The very language of Osiris, which was afterwards spoken by the Ptolemies, is no longer known to his descendants.  The paganisms which still exist in the East are rapidly yielding to the march of western intelligence.  Christianity alone, amidst all these ring and fallen fabrics, retains its original vitality, for, like its author, it is imperishable.”

“It is a curious thing what we call conversation,” observed Mrs. Wolston.  “No sooner is one subject broached than another is introduced; and we go on from one thing to another until the original idea is lost sight of.  Leaving the palace of Charles V., to go with the King of Portugal to a grocer’s shop in some street or other of Paris, we cross the Alps, the Himalaya, and the Atlantic.  Lucullus, Nero, Achilles, Peter, Paul, Tyre and Sidon, Semiramis and Elizabeth—­queens, saints, and philosophers, are all passed in review, and why?  Because the pigeons put my husband in mind of the Palace of St. Paul!”