“I suppose,” said I, “madam, if you will allow me to detain you a moment,”—­

“I am afraid my drink in the cup will get cold, sir, but”—­

“Only a moment, madam,” said I; (for I did not feel at liberty to walk with her;) “only a moment; I am led to think, by your kindness to this poor woman, of the millions of bond-people in our Southern country who never feel the hand of love ministering to their sick and dying”—­

“O you ignorant thing!” said she, pouring the contents of the cup into the mug, and then setting the cup on the mug, all without looking at me; “where were you born and bred?  You must be an abolitionist.  Southern ladies are the very best of nurses; and as to their slaves when they are sick,—­why their hearts are overflowing—­why!” said she, “I could tell you tales that would make you cry like a baby—­the idea! millions of slaves sick and neglected!  Do you belong to ——­ College?”

“Yes, madam,” said I.

“Sophomore?” said she.

“Yes, madam.”  But it was a cutting question.  She had an arch look as she asked it.

“Well sir,” said she, with a graceful air, in a half averted direction, “you have some things to learn about your fellow-countrymen which are not put down in your Moral Philosophies.  Please do not betray your ignorance on subjects about which you are evidently in midnight darkness.”  She was some ways from me, but I heard her continue:  “Was there ever anything like this Northern ignorance and prejudice about the Southern people!”

I had nothing to do but resume my lonely walk.  My sense of desolateness no tongue can tell.  I whistled for Bruno, but in vain.  She called me “an ignorant thing,” said I. Ignorant on the subject of slavery!  How easy it is to misjudge!  Have I steadied free-soil papers all these years only to be called “an ignorant thing!” I could graduate to-day from this institution, though only in my second year, if the examination were confined to the subject of slavery.  I have thoroughly understood the theory; I have learned by heart the codes of the iniquitous system.  I know it root and branch, from pith to bark.  All the lecturers on the subject have not labored in vain, nor spent their strength for nought, with me.  And now to be called “ignorant!” Just as though I could not reason, that is, draw inferences from premises, make deductions from facts.  There is the great fact of slavery; it is “the sum of all villanies;” men holding their fellow-men in bondage for the sake of gain; the heart naturally covetous, oppressive, and cruel, where power is unlimited.  As though the law of kindness could, in such circumstances, possibly prevail and mitigate the sorrows of the bondman!  The direct influence of slavery is to debase, to make barbarous, to petrify; I know as well as though I saw it that the South must be full of neglected, perishing objects, cast out to perish in their sicknesses.  You doubtless are acquainted, dear Aunty, with the