NEGRO LIFE IN AMERICA. 267

 

chants would take Adolph, if I wanted to make him a clerk; or
mechanics, if I wanted him taught a trade? If I wanted to put
Jane and Rosa to a school, how many schools are there in the
northern states that would take them in? how many families that
would board them ? and yet they are as white as many @ woman,
north or south. You see, cousin, I want justice done us. We
are in a bad position. We are the more obvious oppressors of the
negro; but the unchristian prejudice of the north is an oppressor
almost equally severe.”

‘“‘ Well, cousin, I know it is so,” said Miss Ophelia. ‘I know
it was so with me, till I saw that it was my duty to overcome it;
but I trust I have overcome it, and I know there are many good
people at the north who in this matter need only to be taught
what their duty is, to do it. It would certainly be a greater self-
denial to receive heathen among us than to send missionaries to
them ; but I think we would do it.”

‘“‘ You would, 1 know,” said St. Clare. ‘I'd like to see any-
thing you wouldn’t do, if you thought it your duty.”

‘Well, I’m not uncommonly good,” said Miss Ophelia.
“Others would, if they saw things as I do. I intend to take
Topsy home, when I go. I suppose our folks will wonder, at first ;
but I think they will be brought to see as Ido. Besides, I know
there are many people at the north who do exactly what you said.”

“Yes, but they are a minority; and, if we should begin to
emancipate to any extent, we should soon hear from you.”

Miss Ophelia did not reply. There was a pause of some
moments; and St. Clare’s countenance was overcast by a sad,
dreamy expression.

“T don’t know what makes me think of my mother so much
to-night,” he said. ‘I have a strange kind of feeling, as if she
were near me. I keep thinking of things she used to say.
Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us
sometimes.”

St. Clare walked up and down the room for some minutes more,
and then said—

“I believe 111 go down street a few moments, and hear the
news to-night.”

He took his hat, and passed out.

__ Tom followed him to the passage, out of the court, and asked
if he should attend him.

“No, my boy,” said St. Clare. ‘I shall be back in an hour.”

Tom sat down in the verandah. It was a beautiful moonlight
evening, and he sat watching the rising and falling spray of the
fountain, and listening to its murmur. Tom thought of his home,
and that he should soon be a free man, and able to return to it at
will, He thought how he should work to buy his wife and boys.
He felt the muscles of his brawny arms with a sort of joy. as he
thought they would soon belong to himself, and how much they

 

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