There it performed its tragi-comic gibes for several minutes.

I resumed my seat, unterrified, of course, and proceeded to turn the spectre to good account.  I addressed it, in a moderate tone; though I think that I used some gesticulation.  Said I:  Personation of the Slave-power! predatory, grasping, black! thinkest thou a panting fugitive lies hid under my “delusion?” or wouldst thou seize a freeman?  The AEgis of Massachusetts is over me.  Gape!  Yawn!  Thou art powerless; but thy impudence is sublime.—­Ten or fifteen voices then solemnly chanted these words:—­

  “Emblem of Slavery
  Clutching the Free! 
  We’ve digested the turkey
  That gobbled oil thee. 
  Sure as THANKSGIVING hastened,
  Cock-turkey! thy hour,
  Thanksgivings shall blazon
  Thy downfall, Slave-power!

  “The Slave-power has talons,
  Like Nebuchadnezzar;
  Slaves are the Lord’s flagons
  Our modern Belshazzar
  From the Temple of Nature
  Has stolen away. 
  ‘Mean!’ ‘Mean!’ be writ o’er him! 
  Wrath! canst thou de”—­

Here screams of laughter, and a scampering in the entry, and the turkey’s leg tumbling into my room, ended the trick and their cantillation.  I was wishing to hear, in the next stanza, the idea that as the tendons of the claw were worked by a foreign power, so slavery at the South owes its activity to Northern influence.  Perhaps it is due to myself to say that the word scampering, a few lines above, has no revengeful reference, in its first syllable, to the author of the trick.  The cause of humanity, I find, has a tendency to make one cautious and charitable in his use of words.

They have anti-slavery meetings in the village, now and then, which I attend.  All the talent of the place, and the truly good, are there.  One evening, when the excitement rose high, a tall, awkward young man mounted the stage, and said that he wanted to offer one resolution as a cap-sheaf.  You will infer, dear Aunty, that he was an agriculturist.  He lifted his paper high up in one hand, while his other hand was extended in the other direction, and so was his foot under that hand.  He looked like Booetes, on the map of the heavens, which we used to take with us, you know, in studying the comet.  “Read it!” “Read it!” said the meeting.  “I will,” said he, flinging himself almost round once, in his excitement, reminding me of a war-dance, and then taking his sublime attitude again; when he read,—­

“Resolved, Mr. Cheerman, fact is, that Abolition is everything, and nuthin’ else is nuthin’.”

Some of the younger portion of the audience wished to raise a laugh, but the reddening, angry faces of the prominent friends of the slave were turned upon them instantly, and overawed them.