s often since a large one)
turned on me fiercely and said,--

"Would you marry a nigger?"

Resolved to die by my premises, I gave a great gulp and said,--

"Yes!"

Of course one general shout of derision ascended from the throng.
Nothing but the ringing of the bell prevented me from accepting on the
spot the challenge to a fist-fight of a boy whom Lee has since cashiered
from his colonelcy for selling the commissions in his regiment. After
school I was taken in hand by a gentleman, then one of our
belles-lettres teachers, but now a well-known and eloquent divine in New
York city, who for the first time showed me how to beat an antagonist by
avoiding his deductions.

"Tell G. the next time," said the present Rev. Dr. W., "that, if you saw
a poor beggar-woman dying of cold and hunger, you would do all in your
power to help her, though you might be far enough from wanting to marry
her."

How many a _non-sequitur_ of people who didn't sit in the boys' gallery
has this simple little formula of Dr. W.'s helped me to shed aside since
then!

* * * * *

Just after the John Brown raid, I went to Florida. I remained in the
State from the first of January till the first week of the May
following. I found there the climate of Utopia, the scenery of Paradise,
and the social system of Hell.

I am inclined to think that the author of the pamphlet which last spring
advocated amalgamation was a Floridian. The most open relations of
concubinage existed between white chevaliers and black servants in the
town of Jacksonville. I was not surprised at the fact, but was
surprised at its openness. The particular friend of one family belonging
to the cream of Florida society was a gentleman in thriving business who
had for his mistress the waiting-maid of the daughters. He used to sit
composedly with the young ladies of an evening,--one of them playing on
the piano to him, the other smiling upon him over a bouquet,--while the
woman he had afflicted with the burdens, without giving her the
blessings, of marriage, came in curtsying humbly with a tea-tray.
Everybody understood the relation perfectly; but not even the pious
shrugged their shoulders or seemed to care. One day, a lank Virginian,
wintering South in the same hotel with myself, began pitching into me on
the subject of "Northern amalgamators." I called to me a pretty little
boy with the faintest tinge of umber in his skin, and pointed him to the