her
Than those that have their eyes and sight entire."

HUDIBRAS.

"One woman reads another's character
Without the tedious trouble of decyphering."

BEN JONSON. _New Inn_.

So then, this is a Southern heart which prompts these loving, tender
strains. This lady is a slave-holder. It is a slave toward whom this
fellow-feeling, this gentleness of pity, these acts of loving-kindness,
these yearnings of compassion, these respectful words, and all this care
and assiduity, flow forth.

Is she not some singular exception among the people of her country; some
abnormal product, an accidental grace, a growth of luxuriant richness in
a deadly soil, or, at least, is she not like Jenny Lind among singers?
Surely we shall not look upon her like again. It would be difficult to
find even here at the North,--the humane North, nay, even among those
who have solemnly consecrated themselves as "the friends of the slave,"
and who "remember them that are in bonds as bound with them,"--a heart
more loving and good, affections more natural and pure. I am surprised.
This was a slave-babe. Its mother was this lady's slave. I am confused.
This contradicts my previous information; it sets at nought my ideas
upon a subject which I believed I thoroughly understood.

A little negro slave-babe, it seems, is dead, and its owner and mistress
is acting and speaking as Northerners do! Yes, as Northerners do even
when their own daughters' babes lie dead!

The letter must be a forgery. No; here it is before me, in the
handwriting of the lady, post-marked at the place of her residence. But
is it not, after all, a fiction? I can believe almost anything sooner
than that I am mistaken in the opinions and feelings which are
contradicted by this letter. In the spirit of Hume's argument against
the miracles of the Bible, I feel disposed, almost, to urge that it
would be a greater miracle that the course of nature at the South in a
slave-holder's heart should thus be set aside than that there should not
be, in some way, deception about this letter. But still, here is the
letter; and it is written to her father, whom she could not deceive,
whom she had no motive, no wish, to delude. Had it been written to a
Northerner, I could have surmised that she was attempting to make false
impressions about slavery, and its influence on the slave-holder. Why
should she tell her father this simple tale, unless real affection for
the babe and its mother wer