e small German
state. Here one may have a life fraught with enjoyment without any
claim of duty, and receive all honor in a limited circle, and enjoyment
besides. I have become familiar with all the different strata of
existence. I have caroused and scuffled with the red-skins, and more
than once have been in danger of adorning some Indian with my scalp,
and I wanted now to make trial of the red-collars and _their_ chief. I
did not want to leave the world without knowing what court life was. I
cherished still one idyllic dream--something of the German romance
hangs by me yet--and, not without reason, I called my house Villa Eden.
Here it was my purpose to live in enjoyment with my plants, and like my
plants; but I have been dragged again into the world, more by the
thought of my children than any thing else. Enough; you are well aware
that I wanted to be ennobled. Let it be. I have now come to the end.
But"--

He paused, and looked at what he had whittled out; it was an African's
head, with the tongue lolling from his mouth. With one sharp cut,
Sonnenkamp suddenly cut off tongue and mouth, so that they fell down
into his lap; then, grinning like the figure in his hand, he went
on:--

"I have placed myself and mine under the protection of civilization; I
have taken refuge, not in the savage wilderness, but in the bosom of
cultivated life, as it is termed. To be honest, I do not repent it. I
am no milk-sop; my soul has been tempered in the fire of hell. I made
no concealment of my past history, because I considered it bad. What
in this world is bad? I concealed myself from folly and weakness.
Thousands repent without becoming any better. Had I been a soldier in a
successful war, perhaps I should have been a hero. I am a man without
superstition: I haven't even the superstition of the so-called
humanity. I live and die in the conviction that what is called equal
rights is a fable; to free the negro will never do a particle of good,
they will be exterminated, when it comes to the pass that a negro may
sit in the White House at Washington. The world is full of hypocrisy,
and my only pride is, that I am no hypocrite.

"But now, honorable and worthy gentlemen, is there any question you
would like to ask? I am ready to answer it."

He made a pause.

No one made any response.

"Well, then," was his close, "gentlemen of honor and of virtue, I
demand of you, not for my own sake, but for the sake of my children, to
impose