ne's heart
sick. Suppose, ma'am, your two children, there, should be taken from
you, and sold?"

"We can't reason from our feelings to those of this class of persons,"
said the other lady, sorting out some worsteds on her lap.

"Indeed, ma'am, you can know nothing of them, if you say so," answered
the first lady, warmly. "I was born and brought up among them. I know
they _do_ feel, just as keenly,--even more so, perhaps,--as we do."

The lady said "Indeed!" yawned, and looked out the cabin window,
and finally repeated, for a finale, the remark with which she had
begun,--"After all, I think they are better off than they would be to be
free."

"It's undoubtedly the intention of Providence that the African race
should be servants,--kept in a low condition," said a grave-looking
gentleman in black, a clergyman, seated by the cabin door. "'Cursed be
Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be,' the scripture says."*

* Gen. 9:25. This is what Noah says when he wakes out of
drunkenness and realizes that his youngest son, Ham, father
of Canaan, has seen him naked.

"I say, stranger, is that ar what that text means?" said a tall man,
standing by.

"Undoubtedly. It pleased Providence, for some inscrutable reason, to
doom the race to bondage, ages ago; and we must not set up our opinion
against that."

"Well, then, we'll all go ahead and buy up niggers," said the man, "if
that's the way of Providence,--won't we, Squire?" said he, turning to
Haley, who had been standing, with his hands in his pockets, by the
stove and intently listening to the conversation.

"Yes," continued the tall man, "we must all be resigned to the decrees
of Providence. Niggers must be sold, and trucked round, and kept
under; it's what they's made for. 'Pears like this yer view 's quite
refreshing, an't it, stranger?" said he to Haley.

"I never thought on 't," said Haley, "I couldn't have said as much,
myself; I ha'nt no larning. I took up the trade just to make a living;
if 'tan't right, I calculated to 'pent on 't in time, ye know."

"And now you'll save yerself the trouble, won't ye?" said the tall man.
"See what 't is, now, to know scripture. If ye'd only studied yer Bible,
like this yer good man, ye might have know'd it before, and saved ye
a heap o' trouble. Ye could jist have said, 'Cussed be'--what's his
name?--'and 't would all have come right.'" And the stranger, who was
no other than the honest drover whom we introduce