creatures!"

At this instant an old negro came up the steps with an armful of wood,
and the eye of the Northerner noted (was forced to note) the contrast.
There sat the planter, his head crowned with silver hair, his finely
chiseled face glowing with the warmth of his indignant words; and there
passed the old slave, bent and black, his low forehead and broad animal
features seeming to typify scarcely more intelligence than that of the
dog that followed him. The planter spoke to the servant in his kindly
way as he passed, and the old black face lighted with pleasure. This,
too, the schoolmaster's sensitive mind noted: none of his pupils looked
at him with anything like that affection. "But it _is_ right they should
be freed--it _is_ right," he said to himself as he walked back to
Jubilee; "and to that belief will I cling as long as I have my being. It
_is_ right." And then he came into Jubilee, and found three of his
freedmen drunk and quarreling in the street.

Heretofore the settlement, poor and forlorn as it was, had escaped the
curse of drunkenness. No liquor was sold in the vicinity, and David had
succeeded in keeping his scholars from wandering aimlessly about the
country from place to place--often the first use the blacks made of
their freedom. Jubilee did not go to the liquor; but, at last, the
liquor had come to Jubilee. Shall they not have all rights and
privileges, these new-born citizens of ours? The bringer of these
doctrines, and of the fluids to moisten them, was a white man, one of
that class which has gone down on the page of American history,
knighted with the initials C. B. "The Captain" the negroes called him;
and he was highly popular already, three hours of the Captain being
worth three weeks of David, as far as familiarity went. The man was a
glib-tongued, smartly dressed fellow, well supplied with money; and his
errand was, of course, to influence the votes at the next election.
David, meanwhile, had so carefully kept all talk of politics from his
scholars that they hardly knew that an election was near. It became now
a contest between the two higher intelligences. If the schoolmaster had
but won the easily won and strong affections of his pupils! But, in all
those months, he had gained only a dutiful attention. They did not even
respect him as they had respected their old masters, and the cause (poor
David!) was that very thrift and industry which he relied upon as an
example.

"Ole Mars Amme