"I am afraid my drink in the cup will get cold, sir, but"--

"Only a moment, madam," said I; (for I did not feel at liberty to walk
with her;) "only a moment; I am led to think, by your kindness to this
poor woman, of the millions of bond-people in our Southern country who
never feel the hand of love ministering to their sick and dying"--

"O you ignorant thing!" said she, pouring the contents of the cup into
the mug, and then setting the cup on the mug, all without looking at me;
"where were you born and bred? You must be an abolitionist. Southern
ladies are the very best of nurses; and as to their slaves when they are
sick,--why their hearts are overflowing--why!" said she, "I could tell
you tales that would make you cry like a baby--the idea! millions of
slaves sick and neglected! Do you belong to ---- College?"

"Yes, madam," said I.

"Sophomore?" said she.

"Yes, madam." But it was a cutting question. She had an arch look as she
asked it.

"Well sir," said she, with a graceful air, in a half averted direction,
"you have some things to learn about your fellow-countrymen which are
not put down in your Moral Philosophies. Please do not betray your
ignorance on subjects about which you are evidently in midnight
darkness." She was some ways from me, but I heard her continue: "Was
there ever anything like this Northern ignorance and prejudice about the
Southern people!"

I had nothing to do but resume my lonely walk. My sense of desolateness
no tongue can tell. I whistled for Bruno, but in vain. She called me "an
ignorant thing," said I. Ignorant on the subject of slavery! How easy it
is to misjudge! Have I steadied free-soil papers all these years only to
be called "an ignorant thing!" I could graduate to-day from this
institution, though only in my second year, if the examination were
confined to the subject of slavery. I have thoroughly understood the
theory; I have learned by heart the codes of the iniquitous system. I
know it root and branch, from pith to bark. All the lecturers on the
subject have not labored in vain, nor spent their strength for nought,
with me. And now to be called "ignorant!" Just as though I could not
reason, that is, draw inferences from premises, make deductions from
facts. There is the great fact of slavery; it is "the sum of all
villanies;" men holding their fellow-men in bondage for the sake of
gain; the heart naturally covetous, oppressive, and cruel, where power
is unlimited. As