“Yes, it is slander to say you oppressed them;
      Does a man squander the price of his pelf? 
    Was it not often that he who possessed them
      Rather was owned by his servants himself? 
    Caring for all, as in health so in sicknesses,
      He was their father, their patriarch chief;
    Age’s infirmities, infancy’s weaknesses
      Leaning on him for repose and relief.

    “When you went forth in your pluck and your bravery,
      Selling for freedom both fortunes and lives,
    Where was that prophesied outburst of slavery
      Wreaking revenge on your children and wives? 
    Nowhere! you left all to servile safe keeping,
      And this was faithful and true to your trust;
    Master and servant thus mutually reaping
      Double reward of the good and the just?

    “Generous Southerners!  I who address you
      Shared with too many belief in your sins;
    But I recant it,—­thus, let me confess you,
      Knowledge is victor and every way wins: 
    For I have seen, I have heard, and am sure of it,
      You have been slandered and suffering long,
    Paying all Slavery’s cost, and the cure of it,—­
      And the great world shall repent of its wrong.”

I need not say what a riot that honest bit of verse raised among the enthusiasts on both sides.  I spoke from what I saw, and soon had reason to corroborate my judgment:  for I next paid a visit on my old Brook Green school-friend, Middleton, at his burnt and ruined mansion near Summerville:  once a wealthy and benevolent patriarch, surrounded by a negro population who adored him, all being children of the soil, and not one slave having been sold by him or his ancestors for 200 years.  According to him, that violent emancipation was ruin all round:  in his own case a great farm of happy dependants was destroyed, the inhabitants all dead through disease and starvation, a vast estate once well tilled reverted to marsh and jungle, and himself and his reduced to utter poverty,—­all mainly because Mrs. Beecher Stowe had exaggerated isolated facts as if they were general, and because North and South quarrelled about politics and protection.  Mrs. Stowe, I hear, has learnt wisdom, as I did,—­and now like me does justice to both sides.  There is no end to extracts from my journals, if I choose to make them; but I think I will transcribe four stanzas which I gave to Williams Middleton in February 1877, on my departure, as they bring together past and present:—­

    “Ancient schoolmate at Brook Green
      Half a century ago
    (Nay, the years that roll between
      Count some fifty-eight or so),—­
    Oh, the scenes ’twixt Now and Then,
      Life in all its grief and joys,—­
    Meeting Now as aged men
      Since the Then that saw us boys!