lank Virginian without a word. The lank Virginian understood the answer,
and sat down to read Bledsoe on the Soul. Bledsoe, as a slave-labor
growth in metaphysics, (indeed, the only Southern metaphysician, if we
except Governor Wise,) is much coddled at the South. I believe, besides,
that he proves the divine right of Slavery _a priori_. If he begins with
the "Everlasting Me," he must be just the kind of reading for a slave
aristocrat.

* * * * *

It is very amusing to hear the Southerners talk of arming their slaves.
I often heard them do it in Florida. I have read such Richmond Congress
debates as have transpired upon the subject. I do not believe that any
important steps will be taken in the matter. I have known a master mad
with fear, when he saw an old gun-stock protruding from beneath one of
those dog-heaps of straw and sacking called beds, in the negro-quarters.
The fact that it had been thrown away by himself, had no barrel attached
to it, and was picked up by a colored boy who had a passion for carving,
hardly prevented the man from giving the innocent author of his fright a
round "nine-and-thirty." When I was in Florida, a peculiar set of marks,
like the technical "blaze," were found on certain trees in that and the
adjoining State westward. The people were alive in an instant. There
were editorials and meetings. The Southern heart was fired, and fired
off. There was every indication of a negro uprising, and those marks
pointed the way to the various rendezvous. When they were discovered to
be the work of some insignificant rodent, who had put himself on
bark-tonic to a degree which had never chanced to be observed before,
nobody seemed ashamed, for everybody said,--"Well, it was best to be on
the safe side; the thing might have happened just as well as not." I do
not believe that one thinking Southern man (if any such there be in the
closing hours of a desperate conspiracy) has any more idea of arming his
negroes than of translating San Domingo to the threshold of his home. I
should like to see the negroes whom I knew most thoroughly intrusted
with blockade-run rifles, just by way of experiment. Let me recall a
couple of these acquaintances.

* * * * *

The St. John's River is one of the most picturesque and beautiful
streams in the world. Its bluffs never rise higher than fifty or sixty
feet; it has no abrupt precipices; the whole formation abo