the cape; in which tasks Juno helped him, besides
keeping the old house free from ghosts and desolation--indeed, a model
of neatness and coziness.

I must now pause for a minute and describe how it happened that the two
old negroes were living on that out-of-the-way farm in Cornwall. My
father had been a West Indian proprietor, and had resided out in the
West Indies for many years. It was in the days when Wilberforce and
true and noble philanthropists who fought the battle of emancipation
with him first began to promulgate their doctrines. My father, like
most other proprietors, was at first very indignant at hearing of
proceedings which were considered to interfere with their rights and
privileges, and he was their strenuous opponent. To enable himself
still more effectually to oppose the emancipists, he sent for all the
works which appeared on the subject of emancipation, that he might
refute them, as he believed himself fully able to do. He read and read
on, and got more and more puzzled how to contradict the statements which
he saw put forth, till at length, his mind being an honest and clear
one, he came completely round to the opinion of the emancipists. He now
conscientiously asked himself how, with his new opinions, he could
remain a slaveholder. The property was only partly his, and he acted as
manager for the rest of the proprietors. They, not seeing matters in
the light in which he had been brought to view them, would not consent
to free the slaves and, as they believed, not unnaturally, ruin the
property as he desired. Then he proposed having the negroes educated
and prepared for that state of freedom which, he assured his partners,
he was certain they would some day ere long obtain. They replied that
slaves were unfit for education, that the attempt would only set them up
to think something of themselves, and certainly spoil them, and
therefore neither to this proposition would they agree. They were
resolved that as the slaves were theirs by right of law--whatever God
might have to say in the matter--slaves they should remain. At length
my father determined, after praying earnestly for guidance, to have
nothing personally to do with the unclean thing. Had he been able to
improve the condition of the slaves, the case would have been different;
but all the attempts he made were counteracted by his partners and by
the surrounding proprietors, who looked upon him in the light of a
dangerous lunati