hings as this. I took it with me that
evening to a missionary party at the house of Judge ----. I read the
lines. The ladies said nothing for a time, till at last one said to me,
"Such things have helped us in seceding." The Judge took the lines,
looked them over, and, smiling, handed them back to me, saying, "Madam,
is Massachusetts a dark place?" "Yes," said a young gentleman, "and the
dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty." "Oh,"
said I, "how prejudiced you all are!" Whereupon they all laughed. "Now,"
said I, "you think, no doubt, that the author of such a piece is malign.
I know nothing of its origin, but I venture to say it was written by one
whose heart overflows with love to everybody, but who is 'laboring under
a delusion.'" I did not tell them of the "delusion" which you were
"under," in the Senior's room, but I said, "I have a nephew in a New
England college who has the Northern evil very badly. But he is so very
kind. Set him to write poetry about the South and he would produce just
such lamentable stanzas." Nothing will cure these fancies, about oranges
and magnolias not blooming for the little negroes, so well as to bring
these good people where they can see them pelting one another with
oranges, such as these poets never dreamed of, and making money by
selling magnolias to passengers at the railway stations.

"Here beautiful mothers, 'mid splendors untold," etc. I went with the
wife of a planter to her "Maternal Association" of slave-mothers. She
gathers the fifteen mothers among her servants once a fortnight, and
spends an afternoon talking to them about the education of their
children, and reading to them; and when she knelt with them and prayed,
I cried so all the time that I hardly heard anything. Oh what a tale of
love was that Maternal Association! "Here beautiful mothers 'mid
splendors untold," etc.;--those words kept themselves in my thoughts.
Now tell this to some great "friend of the slave," in Massachusetts, and
what will he say?--"All very good, I dare say; hope she will go a little
further, and give those fifteen their liberty." I sometimes say, "Must I
go back to the North, and hear and read such things?"

Yes, it is such things as these, simple and inconsiderable as you may
deem them, which are dividing us irreconcilably, and breaking up the
Union. It is not Messrs. ----, nor their frenzy, but it is Christian
brethren who allow their Sabbath-school children, for exa