use more
densely filled; and all were blacks. It was a sable cloud; but the sun
was in it. The choir were singing a select piece. The principal
_soprano_, an elegant-looking black girl, dressed in perfect taste, held
her book from her in her very small hand covered with a straw-colored
glove. The singing was charming. We asked a white-headed negro in the
vestibule what was going on.

"Why, it is Easter Monday, Missis."

"Is this an Episcopal church?"

"No; Baptist."

"What are all these people here for?" said your Uncle.

"Why, to worship, Sir, I hope. It's holiday."

"Do they go to church, holidays?"

"Why," said he, with a smile and bow, "some of the best of 'em, p'raps."

We returned to the carriage.

"Think," said your uncle, "of two thousand people at the North spending
a part of 'Artillery Election Day' in Boston, for example, in going to
church!"

"Well," said Hattie, "if I were not to live another day, I would bless
God for having let me live to see these things. I am so glad to find
people happy who I had supposed were weeping and wailing."

We admonished her that she had not seen the whole of slavery.

A very interesting coincidence happened to us the next day. We took tea
at Rev. Mr. ----'s. A splendid bride-cake adorned the table. As Hattie
was admiring the ornaments on the cake, the lady of the clergyman smiled
and said,--

"This is from a colored wedding."

Sure enough, that black bride whom we saw the day before had sent her
minister's wife this loaf. Said Miss ----, "I was hurrying to get a silk
dress made last week, but my dressmaker put me off, because she was
working for Phillis B.'s wedding."

We both gave a glance at Hattie. She sat gazing at Miss ----, her lips
partly open, her eyes moistened,--a picture in which delight and
incredulity were in pleasant strife.

* * * * *

We have been in the interior a fortnight. One thing filled me with
astonishment, soon after I came here, namely, to find widow ladies and
their daughters, all through the interior of Southern States, living
remote from other habitations, surrounded by twenty, fifty, or a hundred
slaves. Hattie and I spent a week with a widow lady, whose head slave
was her overseer. There was not a white man within a mile of the house.
More than twenty black men, slaves, were in the negro quarter. I awoke
the first night, and said to Hattie,--

"Do you know that you are 'sleeping on a volcano'