about it, I'll knock you over.'

"'Is it you'll knock me over, you will,' began the Irishman.

"He was over in a moment. The superintendent, sir, gave him a blow between
the eyes, with a fist that was hard as iron. The man staggered, and fell. I
helped him up, sir; and I reckon he thought matters might be worse still,
for he slowly walked off.

"'D----d free country,' he muttered to me, in a kind of confidential tone.
'I thought they only knocked niggers over in Ameriky. Be me soul, but I'll
go back to Ireland.'

"I could not help expressing my astonishment to the superintendent,
repeating the Irishman's words, 'I thought only niggers could be knocked
over in this country.'

"'Niggers!' said the superintendent, 'I guess if you had to deal with
Irishmen, you'd find yourself obliged to knock 'em down.'

"'But don't the laws protect them?' I asked.

"'Laws! why railroads have to be made, and have to be made the right way.
I aint afraid of the laws. I think no more of knocking an Irishman over,
sir, than I do of eating my dinner. One is as necessary as the other.'

"Now," continued Mr. Chapman, "if an Abolitionist sees a slave knocked
over, he runs home to tell his mammy; it's enough to bring fire and
brimstone, and hail, and earthquakes on the whole country. A man must have
a black skin or his sorrows can never reach the hearts of these gentlemen.
They had better look about at home. There is wrong enough there to make a
fuss about."

"Well," said the Englishman, "you had both better come back to the mother
country. The beautiful words, so often quoted, of Curran, may invite you:
'No matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of
slavery, the moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and
the God sink together in the dust, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and
disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation.'"

"Thank you, sir, for your invitation," said Mr. Chapman, "but I'll stay in
Virginia. The old State is good enough for me. I have been to England, and
I saw some of your redeemed, regenerated, disenthralled people--I saw
features on women's faces that haunted me afterward in my dreams. I saw
children with shrivelled, attenuated limbs, and countenances that were old
in misery and vice--such men, women, and children as Dickens and Charlotte
Elizabeth tell about. My little grand-daughter was recovering from a severe
illness, not long ago, and I foun