d even for their luxuries. This is the true feudal
spirit, which looks upon labor as something humiliating and
disgraceful, whereas, in reality, man's only true nobleness consists in
labor.

Two books exercised a powerful influence upon Roland's mind. He read
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" for the first time, and wept over it, but presently
roused himself, and asked,--

"How is this? Shall we point the scourged and oppressed to a reward in
the next world, where the master will be punished and the slave
elevated? But who can compensate him for the torment he has endured
here? Is it not as it was with Claus? Who could indemnify him for the
captivity he had to undergo before he was pronounced innocent?"

Very different was the effect produced upon the young man's mind by a
book of Friedrich Kapp's, entitled "Slavery in America," which had
grown up out of a dense mass of previously accumulated material, and,
by a remarkable coincidence, appeared at precisely this time.

At first, Roland could not comprehend how it was possible for a man to
give so clear and lifelike a picture of facts so revolting. When he
came to the ensuing passage, he wept aloud.

"The owners of the slave-ships are almost always
foreigners,--Spaniards, Portuguese, and, alas!" here followed a dash
that was like a dagger to the reader,--"alas! even Germans."

Everywhere, by day and by night, Roland talked of what was agitating
his soul; and, for the first time, he felt something like distrust of
Benjamin Franklin. He learned, indeed, that Franklin was president of
the Abolition Society in Philadelphia, but, also, that he, like the
other great heroes of the American War for Independence, in his earnest
desire for unanimity at the time the Union was founded, had trusted to
the expectation that slavery would be extinguished within a lifetime by
the mere increase of free labor.

This hope had proved deceptive, and Roland recalled with anguish that
remark of Theodore Parker's,--

"All the great charters of humanity have been written in blood."

Often did Roland stand thoughtfully before a picture of Ary Scheffer's,
which hung in the large sitting-room. It represented the adoration of
Jesus; and there was a negro in it, stretching out his fettered arms
toward the redeeming and consoling Saviour, with a most affecting
expression. For two thousand years, this race had been extending its
fettered hands toward the redemptive thought of mankind. Why had this
lasted s