e has fallen on democratic times, and
embraced a democratic theory, he is to the heart an aristocrat, as much
as my father, who ruled over five or six hundred slaves."

Miss Ophelia felt rather disposed to cavil at this picture, and was
laying down her knitting to begin, but St. Clare stopped her.

"Now, I know every word you are going to say. I do not say they _were_
alike, in fact. One fell into a condition where everything acted against
the natural tendency, and the other where everything acted for it; and
so one turned out a pretty wilful, stout, overbearing old democrat, and
the other a wilful, stout old despot. If both had owned plantations in
Louisiana, they would have been as like as two old bullets cast in the
same mould."

"What an undutiful boy you are!" said Miss Ophelia.

"I don't mean them any disrespect," said St. Clare. "You know reverence
is not my forte. But, to go back to my history:

"When father died, he left the whole property to us twin boys, to be
divided as we should agree. There does not breathe on God's earth a
nobler-souled, more generous fellow, than Alfred, in all that concerns
his equals; and we got on admirably with this property question,
without a single unbrotherly word or feeling. We undertook to work the
plantation together; and Alfred, whose outward life and capabilities
had double the strength of mine, became an enthusiastic planter, and a
wonderfully successful one.

"But two years' trial satisfied me that I could not be a partner in that
matter. To have a great gang of seven hundred, whom I could not know
personally, or feel any individual interest in, bought and driven,
housed, fed, worked like so many horned cattle, strained up to military
precision,--the question of how little of life's commonest enjoyments
would keep them in working order being a constantly recurring
problem,--the necessity of drivers and overseers,--the ever-necessary
whip, first, last, and only argument,--the whole thing was insufferably
disgusting and loathsome to me; and when I thought of my mother's
estimate of one poor human soul, it became even frightful!

"It's all nonsense to talk to me about slaves _enjoying_ all this! To
this day, I have no patience with the unutterable trash that some of
your patronizing Northerners have made up, as in their zeal to apologize
for our sins. We all know better. Tell me that any man living wants to
work all his days, from day-dawn till dark, under the constant