hat I
may depend on," said he, rising and putting on his overcoat.

"Well, call up this evening, between six and seven, and you shall have
my answer," said Mr. Shelby, and the trader bowed himself out of the
apartment.

"I'd like to have been able to kick the fellow down the steps," said
he to himself, as he saw the door fairly closed, "with his impudent
assurance; but he knows how much he has me at advantage. If anybody
had ever said to me that I should sell Tom down south to one of those
rascally traders, I should have said, 'Is thy servant a dog, that
he should do this thing?' And now it must come, for aught I see. And
Eliza's child, too! I know that I shall have some fuss with wife
about that; and, for that matter, about Tom, too. So much for being in
debt,--heigho! The fellow sees his advantage, and means to push it."

Perhaps the mildest form of the system of slavery is to be seen in the
State of Kentucky. The general prevalence of agricultural pursuits of a
quiet and gradual nature, not requiring those periodic seasons of
hurry and pressure that are called for in the business of more southern
districts, makes the task of the negro a more healthful and reasonable
one; while the master, content with a more gradual style of acquisition,
has not those temptations to hardheartedness which always overcome frail
human nature when the prospect of sudden and rapid gain is weighed in
the balance, with no heavier counterpoise than the interests of the
helpless and unprotected.

Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored
indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty
of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend
of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene
there broods a portentous shadow--the shadow of _law_. So long as the
law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living
affections, only as so many _things_ belonging to a master,--so long
as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest
owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection
and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil,--so long it is
impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated
administration of slavery.

Mr. Shelby was a fair average kind of man, good-natured and kindly, and
disposed to easy indulgence of those around him, and there had never
been a lack of anythi