ng the performance in
question, and can indorse the lazy gentleman's assertion. Inheriting the
saltatory traditions of their barbarous ancestry, the slaves have also a
current fund of superstition, of a simple and curious character. But
further ethical disquisitions were here cut short by the appearance of
the Colonel's daughters, when the conversation was at once changed, as
by tacit consent of all three of us. What their father had told me,
relative to his solicitude to keep them in ignorance of all 'unpleasant
things' accruing from the fundamental institution, was in perfect
accordance with Southern instincts. I had observed similar instances of
habitual caution before, reminding me of the eulogized tendency toward
'Orientalism' alluded to in the previous chapter. And, of all people,
South-Carolinians possess the equally rare and admirable faculty of
holding their tongues, when there is occasion for it.

We joined the ladies in a walk. As the elder had much to say to the
clergyman about mutual acquaintances, while her fat relative strolled
carelessly by her side, her sister naturally fell to my companionship.
With a rather handsome and intelligent girl I should have preferred to
converse on general topics than the one with which I had been already
nauseated at Charleston--secession; but she was full of it, and would
not be evaded. Very soon she asked me what I supposed would be the
sentiment in England toward the seceding States, in the assumed event of
their forming a confederacy.

I told her, as I then believed, that it would be adverse, in consequence
of the national hostility to slavery, appealing to her own British
experience for confirmation.

'Yes,' she said, 'they were all abolitionists in England, and could
hardly credit us when we told them that _we_ owned negroes. They thought
all Southerners must be like Legree in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_! But papa,
who went to the club houses, and mixed with the aristocracy, says that
_they_ are much better informed about us; that they were opposed to
emancipation in the West Indies, and have always regarded it as a great
mistake. And England must have cotton, you know.'

'If there's a war between the North and South, won't you find it very
difficult to retain your negroes?' I asked, waiving the immediate
question.

Miss ---- responded by the usual assertion of the fidelity of the slaves
to their owners.

'What if the new Government resorts to emancipation as a weapon