was just debating with myself whether I should make them
aware of it by addressing them, or quietly steal away, when Col.
Donaldson decided the point by entering the library and speaking to me.
He came to ask that I would come to the parlor and see a boy who had
just been sent from one of our charitable institutions, to which he had
applied for a lad to act as a helper to his old waiter, John, who was
now old enough to require some indulgence, and had always been
trustworthy enough to deserve some. The boy looked intelligent and
honest--he was neat in his person and active in his movements.

"He is an orphan," said Col. Donaldson, "and the managers of the
institution have offered to bind him to me for seven years, or till he
is of age. What do you think of it!"

"If the boy himself be willing, I should be glad to know he was so well
provided for," I replied; "though in general, no abolitionist can be
more vehemently opposed to negro slavery than I am to this
apprenticeship business. What is it but a slavery of the worst
description? The master is endowed with irresponsible power, without the
interest in the well-being of his slave, which the planter, the actual
owner of slaves, ordinarily feels."

"You speak strongly," said Col. Donaldson.

"I feel strongly on this subject," I answered. "I knew one instance of
the effects of this system which I have often thought of publishing to
the world, as speaking more powerfully against it than a thousand
addresses could do."

"Tell it to us, Aunt Nancy," said Robert Dudley.

"It is too long to tell now," said I, as the dinner-bell sounded.

"Then let us have it this evening," urged Col. Donaldson--"for it is a
subject in which I am much interested."

Accordingly, in the evening, I gave them the "o'er true tale" of

THE YOUNG MISANTHROPE.

"In the blue summer ocean, far off and alone," lies a little island,
known to mariners in the Pacific only for the fine water with which it
supplies them, and for the bold shore which makes it possible for ships
of considerable tonnage to lie in quiet near the land. Discovered at
first by accident, it has been long, for these reasons, visited both by
English and American whalers. A few years since, and no trace of man's
presence could be found there beyond the belt of rocks, amidst which
arose the springs that were the chief, and indeed only attraction the
island presented to the rough, hardy men by whom it had been visited.
But wi