?"

"What do you mean, Aunt? You frighten me."

"Well, it will not make an eruption to-night," said I. "We will examine
into it to-morrow."

At breakfast I asked the lady how she dared to live so. I told her that
we at the North generally fancied Southern people sleeping on their
arms, expecting any night to be murdered by their slaves.

"It ought to be so, ought it not?" said she, "according to your Northern
theory of slavery; and it may get to be so, if your people persist in
some of their ways. My only fear is of some white men who live about two
miles off. I keep two of my men-servants in the house at night as a
protection against white depredators."

"But," said Hattie, "there have been insurrections. Are you not afraid
that your slaves will rise and assert their liberty?"

The lady smiled and was evidently hesitating whether to answer seriously
or not, when Hattie continued,--

"Aunt! now I see what you meant by our sleeping on a volcano."

"Yes," said I, "we at the North often speak of you Southerners as
sleeping on a volcano. Our idea is that the blacks here are prisoners,
stealing about in a sulky mood, vengeance brooding in their hearts, and
that they wait for their time of deliverance, as prisoners in our
state-prison watch their chance to escape."

"Well," said she, "believe I am the only slave on the premises. I am
sure that no one but myself is watching for a chance to escape. I would
run away from these people if I could. But what shall I do with them? I
am not willing to sell them, for when I have hinted at leaving, there is
such entreaty for me to remain, and such demonstrations of affection and
attachment, that I give it up.

"Here," said she, "are seven house-servants, large and small, to do work
which at the North a man and two capable girls would easily do. I have
to devise ways to subdivide work and give each a share. My husband
carried it so far that he had one boy to black boots and another shoes,
and these two 'bureaus' were kept separate."

"Oh," said I, "what a curse slavery is to you!"

"As to that," said she, "it is the negroes who are a curse, not their
slavery. So long as they are on the same soil with us, the subordination
which slavery establishes makes it the least of two evils. If there is
any curse in the case, it is the blacks themselves, not their slavery.
Were it not for their enslavement to us, we should hate them and drive
them away, like Indiana and Illinois and Or