ed
him--travel off to some unknown region, and sing hallelujahs to the
LORD, forever. He rather sensibly imagines that such everlasting singing
may in time produce hoarseness, so he prepares his vocal organs for the
long concert by a vigorous discipline while here, and at the same time
cultivates instrumental music, having a dim idea that the LORD has an
ear for melody, and will let him, when he is tired of singing, vary the
exercise "wid de banjo and de bones." This is all he knows; and his
owner, however well-disposed he may be, cannot teach him more. Noble,
Christian masters whom I have met--have told me that they did not _dare_
instruct their slaves. Some of their negroes were born in their houses,
nursed in their families, and have grown up the playmates of their
children, and yet they are forced to see them live and die like the
brutes. One need not be accused of fanatical abolitionism if he deems
such a system a _little_ in conflict with the spirit of the nineteenth
century!

The sun had scarcely turned his back upon the world, when a few drops of
rain, sounding on the piazza-roof over our heads, announced a coming
storm. Soon it burst upon us in magnificent fury--a real, old-fashioned
thunderstorm, such as I used to lie awake and listen to when a boy,
wondering all the while if the angels were keeping a Fourth of July in
heaven. In the midst of it, when the earth and the sky appeared to have
met in true Waterloo fashion, and the dark branches of the pines seemed
writhing and tossing in a sea of flame, a loud knock came at the
hall-door (bells are not the fashion in Dixie), and a servant soon
ushered into the room a middle-aged, unassuming gentleman, whom my host
received with a respect and cordiality which indicated that he was no
ordinary guest. There was in his appearance and manner that indefinable
something which denotes the man of mark; but my curiosity was soon
gratified by an introduction. It was "Colonel" A----. This title, I
afterward learned, was merely honorary: and I may as well remark here,
that nearly every one at the South who has risen to the ownership of a
negro, is either a captain, a major, or a colonel, or, as my ebony
driver expressed it: "Dey'm all captins and mates, wid none to row de
boat but de darkies." On hearing the name, I recognized it as that of
one of the oldest and most aristocratic South Carolina families, and the
new guest as a near relative to the gentleman who married the bea