ying, you ought not to be sitting
drinking your tea as you are now, or to have spent the afternoon
playing croquet with us girls; you ought to gird yourself with
sackcloth, and go up and down the land, raising the alarm, and
saying, 'Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.'"

"Well," said Theophilus, while a covert smile played about his
lips, "you know the saying, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow,'
etc. Things are not yet gone to destruction, only going,--and why
not have a good time on deck before the ship goes to pieces? Your
chimney-corner is a tranquil island in the ocean of trouble, and
your muffins are absolutely perfect. I'll take another, if you'll
please to pass them."

"I've a great mind not to pass them," said Jenny. "Are you in earnest
in what you are saying, or are you only saying it for sensation? How
can people believe such things and be comfortable? I could not. If I
believed all you have been saying I could not sleep nights,--I should
be perfectly miserable; and _you_ cannot really believe all this, or
you would be."

"My dear child," said Mrs. Crowfield, "our friend's picture is
the truth painted with all its shadows and none of its lights. All
the dangers he speaks of are real and great, but he omits the
counterbalancing good. Let _me_ speak now. There never has been a
time in our history when so many honest and just men held power in
our land as now,--never a government before in which the public
councils recognized with more respect the just and the right.
There never was an instance of a powerful government showing more
tenderness in the protection of a weak and defenseless race than
ours has shown in the care of the freedmen hitherto. There never
was a case in which the people of a country were more willing to
give money and time and disinterested labor to raise and educate
those who have thus been thrown on their care. Considering that we
have had a great, harassing, and expensive war on our hands, I
think the amount done by government and individuals for the
freedmen unequaled in the history of nations; and I do not know why
it should be predicted from this past fact that, in the future,
both government and people are about to throw them to the lions,
as Mr. Theophilus supposes. Let us wait, at least, and see. So
long as government maintains a freedmen's bureau, administered by
men of such high moral character, we must think, at all events,
that there are strong indications in