that is
taking the world on, through many upsets and disasters, to that final
consummation.

Theophilus holds the same belief theoretically; but it is apt to sink
so far out of sight in the mire of present disaster as to be of very
little comfort to him.

"Yes," he said, "we are going to ruin, in my view, about as fast as we
can go. Miss Jenny, I will trouble you for another small lump of sugar
in my tea."

"You have been saying that, about our going to ruin, every time you
have taken tea here for four years past," said Jenny; "but I always
noticed that your fears never spoiled your relish either for tea or
muffins. People talk about being on the brink of a volcano, and the
country going to destruction, and all that, just as they put pepper on
their potatoes; it is an agreeable stimulant in conversation,--that's
all."

"For my part," said my wife, "I can speak in another vein. When had we
ever in all our history so bright prospects, so much to be thankful
for? Slavery is abolished; the last stain of disgrace is wiped from
our national honor. We stand now before the world self-consistent with
our principles. We have come out of one of the severest struggles
that ever tried a nation, purer and stronger in morals and religion,
as well as more prosperous in material things."

"My dear madam, excuse me," said Theophilus; "but I cannot help being
reminded of what an English reviewer once said,--that a lady's facts
have as much poetry in them as Tom Moore's lyrics. Of course poetry is
always agreeable, even though of no statistical value."

"I see no poetry in my facts," said Mrs. Crowfield. "Is not slavery
forever abolished, by the confession of its best friends,--even of
those who declare its abolition a misfortune, and themselves ruined in
consequence?"

"I confess, my dear madam, that we have succeeded, as we human
creatures commonly do, in supposing that we have destroyed an evil,
when we have only changed its name. We have contrived to withdraw
from the slave just that fiction of property relation which made it
for the interest of some one to care for him a little, however
imperfectly; and, having destroyed that, we turn him out defenseless
to shift for himself in a community every member of which is
embittered against him. The whole South resounds with the outcries of
slaves suffering the vindictive wrath of former masters; laws are
being passed hunting them out of this State and out of that; the
animosity o