ow-feeling for the
lazy; and when poor, shiftless dogs put stones at the bottom of their
cotton-baskets to make them weigh heavier, or filled their sacks with
dirt, with cotton at the top, it seemed so exactly like what I should do
if I were they, I couldn't and wouldn't have them flogged for it. Well,
of course, there was an end of plantation discipline; and Alf and I
came to about the same point that I and my respected father did, years
before. So he told me that I was a womanish sentimentalist, and would
never do for business life; and advised me to take the bank-stock and
the New Orleans family mansion, and go to writing poetry, and let him
manage the plantation. So we parted, and I came here."

"But why didn't you free your slaves?"

"Well, I wasn't up to that. To hold them as tools for money-making, I
could not;--have them to help spend money, you know, didn't look quite
so ugly to me. Some of them were old house-servants, to whom I was much
attached; and the younger ones were children to the old. All were well
satisfied to be as they were." He paused, and walked reflectively up and
down the room.

"There was," said St. Clare, "a time in my life when I had plans and
hopes of doing something in this world, more than to float and drift. I
had vague, indistinct yearnings to be a sort of emancipator,--to free
my native land from this spot and stain. All young men have had such
fever-fits, I suppose, some time,--but then--"

"Why didn't you?" said Miss Ophelia;--"you ought not to put your hand to
the plough, and look back."

"O, well, things didn't go with me as I expected, and I got the despair
of living that Solomon did. I suppose it was a necessary incident to
wisdom in us both; but, some how or other, instead of being actor and
regenerator in society, I became a piece of driftwood, and have been
floating and eddying about, ever since. Alfred scolds me, every time
we meet; and he has the better of me, I grant,--for he really does
something; his life is a logical result of his opinions and mine is a
contemptible _non sequitur_."

"My dear cousin, can you be satisfied with such a way of spending your
probation?"

"Satisfied! Was I not just telling you I despised it? But, then, to come
back to this point,--we were on this liberation business. I don't think
my feelings about slavery are peculiar. I find many men who, in their
hearts, think of it just as I do. The land groans under it; and, bad as
it is for the