The Flower of the Chapdelaines

of their beautiful place one spring afternoon of 1860, "don't forget that to

ther was an abolitionist, and yet he and they had never had a harsh word between them. If the general goodness of those who do some particular thing were any proof that that particular thing is good to do, they would have convinced me, without

had just heard was not the kind I most needed, "you're goin

my uncle; "she's as

my dear, and I say now, you may tell her anything she wants to know; we give you perfect lib

line at Mingo

s Mingo?"

a very low and trailing

. "If we lived in town, where there's better chance to pick up small earnings," remarked uncle, "those two and Sid

eyond that he's allowed to keep." The carriage stopped at the door; half a dozen servants came, s

neatly jointed, and there was nothing inky in her amazing blackness, her red blood so enriched it. Yet she was as really African in her strong, eager mind as in her color, and the English language, on her tongue, was like a painter's palette and brushes in the hands of a monkey. Her first question to m

me where I must either say I did not believe in the right to hold slaves, or must keep silence; and when I kept silence of course she knew. For a long mo

r that she spoke only soft queries, but they grew more and more significant, and I soon saw that her supposed content was purely a pious endurance, and that her soul felt bondage as her body would have felt a harrow. So I left the fugitiv

ulate dat Moses aw Aaron aw Joshaway

d as soon as it was fully given sank back into thought. "Miss Maud, don't you reckon dat ef Moses had a-save' up money enough to a-boughtened his freedom, dat'd a-been de wery sign mos' pleasin' to

nt of its every natural and social condition, her questions would have wholly gathered them in. She asked if our climate was very hard on negroes; what clothing we wore in summer, and

of the poor lot of the few free negroes of whom she knew, and of the time-serving and shifty indolence, the thievishness, faithlessness, and unaspiring torpidity of "some niggehs"; and when I

sen' it, ef us feels his ahm und' us, us ought to be 'shame' not to be happy, oughtn't us?" All at once she spran

xaltation still showed through her fond smile. "You know what dat in

climb de

y a swee

road is n

cloud an

her thoughts which took in everything that fell upon her mind, as a great river drinks the rains of all its valleys. Presently the open window gave me my cue: the st