ad never seen Mr. Grant; but they knew that he had arrived the
night before. 'Well, Jack,' says Mrs. ----, 'I see you have got some
good things for us.' 'O, not much, Missis; but they thought you and Mr.
Grant would excuse 'em for sending it.' So there were deposited on the
breakfast-table, 'big hominy' in one or two shapes, rare fish,
puff-muffins, and several dishes which called for Jack's
interpretations. 'And Master says, shall he send the carriage round for
you this forenoon? and he will call himself.' The evening talk was
interrupted by a black woman, all smiles, bearing a waiter of ice-cream
and other refreshments, from another house; and so the visit was a
succession of surprises from families who, at the South, count each
other's guests their own. Mr. Grant was a strong anti-secessionist, and
he spent much breath in arguing with the people in private. On his
return to his room, one day, he found a glass dish on the table, filled
with japonicas, camellias, roses, and other early flowers, with the card
of a married lady,--with whom he had had a debate,--inscribed, 'From the
hottest of the Secessionists.' He seems modified in his views a little
about 'the sum of all villanies,' since his return."

"Yes," said Mrs. North, "and the people here explain it by saying, 'O,
he was feted, and flattered.'

"Yes," she continued, "some of our people will sacrifice their
confidence in man or angel, rather than believe anything good about
slavery."

I said to her, "Add the Bible to those witnesses, Mrs. North."

"Husband," said she, "please reach me that long, thin, brown-covered
book on the what-not." She then read an extract from the sixty-third
page; it was a book by one now deceased, called, "Experience as a
Minister":

"I had not been long a minister, before I found this worship of the
Bible as a fetish hindering me at every step. If I declared the
Constancy of Nature's Laws, and sought therein great argument for the
Constancy of God, all the miracles came and held their mythologic finger
up. Even Slavery was 'of God,' for the divine statutes in the Old
Testament admitted the principle that man might own a man, as well as a
garden or an ox, and provided for the measure. Moses and the Prophets
were on its side; and neither Paul of Tarsus, nor Jesus of Nazareth,
uttered a direct word against it."

* * * * *

"But here is the sun!" said I.

"We are all more cheerful," said Mrs. North,