ith its alleviations and comforts, the practical mitigations of
an oppressive system, theoretical evils qualified by difference of
color, constitution, and history, and all the goodness and mercy which
Christianity and a well-ordered state of society provide, we at the
North do not see. Nor do our people consider that running away, and the
complaints of the slaves, are partly chargeable to the discontent and
restlessness of human nature; but we seem to take it for granted that
every one who flees from the South is as though he had escaped from a
prison-ship.

While at the North, I remember reading an article, signed with initials,
in a prominent Massachusetts magazine, which contained this sentence:
"Arsenic is universally in possession of the negroes; but it is
considered the part of wisdom, where families are poisoned, that the
fact should be kept as secret as possible." This was brought very
powerfully to my mind one day on passing through King Street, in
Charleston, and seeing for a painted sign over an apothecary's shop, a
tall, benevolent-looking negro, in his shirt sleeves, behind a golden
mortar, with the pestle in his hands, as though at work.

Now, I thought with myself, as I stood and enjoyed the sight, what a
palpable and eloquent, though undesigned and silent, refutation that is,
of all such Northern chimeras. If poisons are mixed with articles of
food or medicine by the negroes with any noticeable frequency, the sign
of a negro compounding medicines for public sale would surely be, to
customers, the most detersive sign which an apothecary could erect over
his premises. That little incident, and things like it, which are
meeting you at every turn, show the state of things here to be in
pleasing contrast to the horrors with which the imaginations of many of
us Northerners are peopled. I find, in the "Charleston Mercury," a good
cut of this "negro and golden mortar," and I send it to you as an
appropriate answer to much of your letter.

Our landlord, driving us about the country the other day, and needing
silver change, came to a gang of slaves in a field, and cried out,
"Boys, got any silver for a five dollar gold piece?" Several hands went
into as many pockets, at once, and a lively fellow among them getting
the start, jumped over the fence, and changed the money. I had been here
a month when I received your letter, and when I read it I at first
laughed as heartily, I suspect, as "the pro-slavery Senior"