would stay for
my present salary. But I will not stay: I never eat my words. If you are
ready to settle with me now, say so; if not, say when you will be
ready.'

'He said he was ready then, and we settled. I had a few hundred dollars
due to me, which he paid, and I was on my way to Grand Gulf within two
hours after. The subject of the murder of the mulatto girl was not
alluded to between us.'

* * * * *

'Well,' I said to Tom, 'what is your opinion of slavery now? You are
able to judge for yourself of the 'institution,' having formed one of
its ornaments, and contributed to keep up its 'dignity.' I suppose you
have read _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, and are prepared to give a flat denial to
the pretended facts of the author. Of course it is all false about the
parting of families--husband and wife, parent and child, etc., and all
the instances of that sort of cruelty cited in her appendix are trash
and a libel upon the beneficent and patriarchal institution?'

I spoke ironically, and he so understood me. The passions of Tom's great
heart had been gradually wrought up by a review of the bloody scene he
had himself witnessed, and which had made a strong impression on him,
and he now sprung to his feet.

'_Uncle Tom's Cabin_ be d--d!' he cried. 'Owen Glendower, what I've seen
with my own eyes I know, don't I? I could tell you things that would
make your hair stand straight out, if I was a mind to; but it's no use.

'As to slavery, as it exists in the Sugar and Cotton States, to-day, I
have but one fit illustration for it.

'The religious writers of the Jews, and those who follow their ideas,
have pictured to us the future condition of the sinner and finally
impenitent as the most desperate and deplorable possible to be
conceived--as they thought. They had never witnessed American slavery as
practiced in the nineteenth century. If they, had, the material fire,
the tormenting fiends, and the 'worm that never dies,' would have given
place to the natural features of a Mississippi plantation, where the
unrestrained passions of avarice, brutality, and lust make a Hell to
which the _Gehenna_ of the Hebrews is but a mild sort of purgatory by
comparison.

'About parting husband and wife, and parent and child, I will tell you
one thing I myself saw in Kentucky; and in Kentucky you know, slavery
exists in its mildest form, and the system approaches nearer to that
patriarchal character which is most f