George Harris is a natural Abolitionist, with a dark complexion.  He is a remarkable youth in other respects, though I should first consider the enormous fact of George’s master appropriating to himself the benefit of his servant’s cleverness.  Even with a show of right this may be a mean trick, but it is the way of the world.  A large portion of New England men are at this time claiming each other’s patents.  I know of an instance down East, for Southerners can sometimes “tak notes, and prent ’em too.”  A gentleman took a friend to his room, and showed him an invention for which he was about to apply for a patent.  The friend walked off with his hands in his pocket; his principles had met, and passed an appropriation bill; the invention had become his own—­in plain English, he stole it.  Washington is always full of people claiming each other’s brains.  The lawyers at the Patent Office have their hands full.  They must keep wide awake, too.  Each inventor, when he relates his grievances, brings a witness to maintain his claim.  There is no doubt that, after a while, there will be those who can testify to the fact of having seen the idea as it passed through the inventor’s mind.  The way it is settled at present is this—­whoever can pay the most for the best lawyer comes off triumphantly!  Poor George is not the only smart fellow in the world outdone by somebody better off than himself.

George positively refuses to hear the Bible quoted.  He believes in a higher law, no doubt, Frederic Douglas being editorial expounder; a sort of Moses of this century, a little less meek, though, than the one who instructed the Israelites.  George won’t hear the Bible; he prefers, he says, appealing to the Almighty himself.  This makes me fear his Abolitionist friends are not doing right by him; putting him up to shooting, and turning Spanish gentleman, and all sorts of vagaries; to say nothing of disobeying the laws of the country.  No one blames him, though, for escaping from a hard master; at least, I do not.

It would be a grand thing to stand on the shore of a new country, and see before you, free, every slave and prisoner on the soil of the earth; to hear their Te Deum ascend to the listening heavens.  Methinks the sun would stand still, as it did of old, and earth would lift up her voice, and lead the song of her ransomed children; but, alas! this cannot be yet—­the time is not come.  Oppression wears her crown in every clime, though it is sometimes hidden from the gaze of her subjects.

George declares he knows more than his master; “he can read and write better;” but his logic is bad.  He thus discusses the indications of Providence.  A friend reminds him of what the apostle says, “Let every man abide in the condition in which he is called,” and he immediately uses this simile:  “I wonder, Mr. Wilson, if the Indians should come, and take you a prisoner, away from your wife and children, and want to keep you all your life hoeing corn for them, if you’d think it your duty to abide in that condition in which you were called.  I rather think, that you’d think the first stray horse you could find an indication of Providence—­shouldn’t you?”