eculiar institution led to his defeat for the
bench by a more active partisan. His was too just a mind not to
perceive the arguments on both sides; but, on the whole, he had stood
by the ancient landmarks, content to let events drift to a conclusion
he did not expect to see; the institutions of his fathers would
probably last his lifetime.

One day Judge Straight was sitting in his office reading a recently
published pamphlet,--presenting an elaborate pro-slavery argument,
based upon the hopeless intellectual inferiority of the negro, and the
physical and moral degeneration of mulattoes, who combined the worst
qualities of their two ancestral races,--when a barefooted boy walked
into the office, straw hat in hand, came boldly up to the desk at which
the old judge was sitting, and said as the judge looked up through his
gold-rimmed glasses,--

"Sir, I want to be a lawyer!"

"God bless me!" exclaimed the judge. "It is a singular desire, from a
singular source, and expressed in a singular way. Who the devil are
you, sir, that wish so strange a thing as to become a
lawyer--everybody's servant?"

"And everybody's master, sir," replied the lad stoutly.

"That is a matter of opinion, and open to argument," rejoined the
judge, amused and secretly flattered by this tribute to his profession,
"though there may be a grain of truth in what you say. But what is your
name, Mr. Would-be-lawyer?"

"John Walden, sir," answered the lad.

"John Walden?--Walden?" mused the judge. "What Walden can that be? Do
you belong in town?"

"Yes, sir."

"Humph! I can't imagine who you are. It's plain that you are a lad of
good blood, and yet I don't know whose son you can be. What is your
father's name?"

The lad hesitated, and flushed crimson.

The old gentleman noted his hesitation. "It is a wise son," he
thought, "that knows his own father. He is a bright lad, and will have
this question put to him more than once. I'll see how he will answer
it."

The boy maintained an awkward silence, while the old judge eyed him
keenly.

"My father's dead," he said at length, in a low voice. "I'm Mis' Molly
Walden's son." He had expected, of course, to tell who he was, if
asked, but had not foreseen just the form of the inquiry; and while he
had thought more of his race than of his illegitimate birth, he
realized at this moment as never before that this question too would be
always with him. As put now by Judge Straight, it made h