" said I, "that you will say and do nothing to occasion
any reproach. Certainly, there are two sides to every question. If you
manifest any surprise at finding that there is another side to the
Liberty question, I fear that some will quote to you the fable of the
mouse who was born in a meal-chest."

"I never heard of it," said she.

"Why," said I, "the mouse one day stole up to the edge of the chest,
when the cover had been left open, and, looking round on the
barn-chamber, she said, 'Dear me, I had no idea that the world was half
so large.'"

"The cover has been down and the meal has been in my eyes long enough,"
said she. "I have been so much accustomed for a long time to read in our
papers about 'enormous wrong,' 'stupendous injustice,' 'the
slave-breeders,' 'sum of all villanies,' that, unconsciously, I have
come to think of the South, indiscriminately, as though they were Robin
Hood's men, or"--

"O my dear," said I, "you must have known that there are many good
people at the South, notwithstanding slavery."

"How can there be one good man or woman there," said she, "if all that
those newspapers say of slave-holding be true? Husband, depend upon it
we have been believing a great lie. Just think of that letter. What a
tale many of those words reveal. When the infants of our former servants
die, do our ladies write such letters about them? I should judge that
owning a fellow-creature softens and refines the heart, if this letter
is any sign, instead of making them all barbarians. All the newspapers
and novels in the world cannot do away the impressions which that
letter has made on my mind. I tell you, husband, having slaves is not
the unmitigated curse to owners nor to slaves that we have been taught
to believe."

"Perhaps," said I, interrupting her, "you would like to live at the
South, and own a few."

"I could not be hired by wealth," said she, "to have them for help, even
here. I never did like them; and when I think that there are good men
and women who do, and who are as kind to the poor creatures as this dear
lady, I think that we should give thanks to God."

"Oh, the Southern people are not all like this good lady, by any means,"
said I.

"'Peradventure,'" said she, "'there be fifty righteous.' There must be
tens of thousands. People like this lady are very apt to make good the
saying of the blackberry pickers when they see a blackberry, 'Where
there's one there's more.' The letter reads as thou