moments was broken by the
gentleman's saying, "As your 'July' was such a very good girl, and had
served you so faithfully before she lost her health, don't you think it
would have been better to have emancipated her?"

"No, indeed I do not!" scornfully exclaimed the lady, as she
impatiently crammed the fine handkerchief into a little work-bag. "I
have no patience with people who set niggers at liberty. It is the
very worst thing you can do for them. My dear husband just before he
died willed all his niggers free. But I and all our friends knew very
well that he was too good a man to have ever thought of doing such an
unkind and foolish thing, had he been in his right mind, and, therefore
we had the will altered as it should have been in the first place."

"Did you mean, madam," asked my master, "that willing the slaves free
was unjust to yourself, or unkind to them?"

"I mean that it was decidedly unkind to the servants themselves. It
always seems to me such a cruel thing to turn niggers loose to shift
for themselves, when there are so many good masters to take care of
them. As for myself," continued the considerate lady, "I thank the
Lord my dear husband left me and my son well provided for. Therefore I
care nothing for the niggers, on my own account, for they are a great
deal more trouble than they are worth, I sometimes wish that there was
not one of them in the world; for the ungrateful wretches are always
running away. I have lost no less than ten since my poor husband died.
It's ruinous, sir!"

"But as you are well provided for, I suppose you do not feel the loss
very much," said the passenger.

"I don't feel it at all," haughtily continued the good soul; "but that
is no reason why property should be squandered. If my son and myself
had the money for those valuable niggers, just see what a great deal of
good we could do for the poor, and in sending missionaries abroad to
the poor heathen, who have never heard the name of our blessed
Redeemer. My dear son who is a good Christian minister has advised me
not to worry and send my soul to hell for the sake of niggers; but to
sell every blessed one of them for what they will fetch, and go and
live in peace with him in New York. This I have concluded to do. I
have just been to Richmond and made arrangements with my agent to make
clean work of the forty that are left."

"Your son being a good Christian minister," said the gentleman, "It's
strange he di