is sure.

All America is ready for "the likes of you." Think it over, and
meanwhile please know there has been placed with the firm in Dublin
money enough to bring you here with comfort. You must not refuse
it. Take it as a loan, for I know you will not take it as a gift.

I do not know the story of the killing, even as it was told in
court. Well, some one killed the man, but not you, and the truth
will out in time. If one should come to me out of the courts of
heaven, and say that there it was declared you were a rogue, I
should say heaven was no place for me. No, of one thing I am sure--
you never killed an undefended man. Wayward, wanton, reckless,
dissipated you may have been, but you were never depraved--never!

When you are free, lift up your shoulders to all the threats of
time, then go straight to the old firm where the money is, draw it,
take ship, and come here. If you let me know you are coming, I will
be there to meet you when you step ashore, to give you a firm hand-
clasp; to tell you that in this land there is a good place for you,
if you will win it.

Here there is little crime, though the perils of life are many.
There is Indian fighting; there are Indian depredations; and not a
dozen miles from where I sit men have been shot for crimes
committed. The woods are full of fighters, and pirates harry the
coast. On the wall of the room where I write there are carbines
that have done service in Indian wars and in the Revolutionary War;
and here out of the window I can see hundreds of black heads-slaves,
brought from Africa and the Indies, slaves whose devotion to my
uncle is very great. I hear them singing now; over the white-tipped
cotton-fields there flows the sound of it.

This plantation has none of the vices that belong to slavery. Here
life is complete. The plantation is one great workshop where trades
are learned and carried out-shoeing, blacksmithing, building,
working in wood and metal.

I am learning here--you see I am quite old, for I am twenty-one now
--the art of management. They tell me that when my uncle's day is
done--I grieve to think it is not far off--I must take the rod of
control. I work very, very hard. I have to learn figures and
finance; I have to see how all the work is done, so that I shall
know it is done right. I have had to discipline the supervisors and
boo