knelt down and prayed, that however long I
might live at the South, I might never get to look upon evil as
anything but evil, nor ever become accustomed to the things I thought
ought not to be, so as not to feel them. I shall never forget that
half hour. It broke my heart that my father and I should look on such
matters with so different eyes; and with my prayer for myself, which
came from the very bottom of my heart, I poured out also a flood of
love and tears over him, and of petition that he might have better
eyesight one day. Ah yes! and before it should be too late to right
the wrong he was unconsciously doing.

For now I began to see, in the light of this letter first, that my
father's eyes were not clear but blind in regard to these matters. And
what he said about me led me to think and believe that his blindness
was the effect, not of any particular hardness or fault in him, but of
long teaching and habit and custom. For I saw that everybody else
around me seemed to take the present condition of things as the true
and best one; not only convenient, but natural and proper. Everybody,
that is, who did not suffer by it. I had more than suspicions that the
seven hundred on the estate were of a different mind here from the
half dozen who lived in the mansion; and that the same relative
difference existed on the other plantations in the neighbourhood. We
made visits occasionally, and the visits were returned. I was not shut
out from them, and so had some chance to observe things within a
circle of twenty miles. Our "neighbourhood" reached so far. And child
as I was, I could not help seeing: and I could not help looking, half
unconsciously, for signs of what lay so close on my heart.

My father's letter thus held some material of comfort for me, although
it refused my request. Papa would not overset the overseer's decision
about the prayer-meetings. It held something else. There was a little
scrap of a note to Aunt Gary, saying, in the form of an order, that
Daisy was to have ten dollars paid to her every quarter; that Mrs.
Gary would see it done; and would further see that Daisy was not
called upon, by anybody, at any time, to give any account whatever of
her way of spending the same.

How I thanked papa for this! How I knew the tender affection and
knowledge of me which had prompted it. How well I understood what it
was meant to do. I had a little private enjoyment of Aunt Gary's
disconsolate face and grudging han