the slave is kept in that dependent,
semi-childish state, that there is no making him realize the rights of
property, or feel that his master's goods are not his own, if he can get
them. For my part, I don't see how they _can_ be honest. Such a fellow
as Tom, here, is,--is a moral miracle!"

"And what becomes of their souls?" said Miss Ophelia.

"That isn't my affair, as I know of," said St. Clare; "I am only dealing
in facts of the present life. The fact is, that the whole race are
pretty generally understood to be turned over to the devil, for our
benefit, in this world, however it may turn out in another!"

"This is perfectly horrible!" said Miss Ophelia; "you ought to be ashamed
of yourselves!"

"I don't know as I am. We are in pretty good company, for all that,"
said St. Clare, "as people in the broad road generally are. Look at
the high and the low, all the world over, and it's the same story,--the
lower class used up, body, soul and spirit, for the good of the upper.
It is so in England; it is so everywhere; and yet all Christendom stands
aghast, with virtuous indignation, because we do the thing in a little
different shape from what they do it."

"It isn't so in Vermont."

"Ah, well, in New England, and in the free States, you have the better
of us, I grant. But there's the bell; so, Cousin, let us for a while lay
aside our sectional prejudices, and come out to dinner."

As Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen in the latter part of the afternoon,
some of the sable children called out, "La, sakes! thar's Prue a coming,
grunting along like she allers does."

A tall, bony colored woman now entered the kitchen, bearing on her head
a basket of rusks and hot rolls.

"Ho, Prue! you've come," said Dinah.

Prue had a peculiar scowling expression of countenance, and a sullen,
grumbling voice. She set down her basket, squatted herself down, and
resting her elbows on her knees said,

"O Lord! I wish't I 's dead!"

"Why do you wish you were dead?" said Miss Ophelia.

"I'd be out o' my misery," said the woman, gruffly, without taking her
eyes from the floor.

"What need you getting drunk, then, and cutting up, Prue?" said a spruce
quadroon chambermaid, dangling, as she spoke, a pair of coral ear-drops.

The woman looked at her with a sour surly glance.

"Maybe you'll come to it, one of these yer days. I'd be glad to see you,
I would; then you'll be glad of a drop, like me, to forget your misery."

"Come, Prue,