liars. At eighteen he was a match for Talleyrand in using speech to conceal his thoughts.

He saw that, if slaves were well treated, it was because the prudent master believed that good treatment would pay. Humanity was gauged by considerations of cotton. Thus the very kindnesses of a master had the taint of an intense selfishness; and Peculiar, while readily availing himself of all indulgences, correctly appreciated the spirit in which they were granted.

The devotional element seems to be especially active in the negro; but it has little chance for rational development, dwarfed and kept from the light as the intellect is. The uneducated slave, like the Italian brigand, indeed, like many worthy people who go to church, thinks it an impertinence to mix up morality with religion. He agrees fully with the distinguished American divine, who the other Sunday began his sermon with these words, "Brethren, I am not here to teach you morality, but to save your souls." As if a saving faith could exist allied to a corrupt morality!

Peculiar could not come in contact with a sham, however solemn and pretentious, without applying to it the puncture of his skeptical analysis. He saw his master, Herbert, go to church on a Sunday and kneel in prayer, and on a Monday shoot down Big Sam for attaching himself to the wrong woman. He saw the Rev. Mr. Bloom take the murderer by the hand, as if nothing had happened more tragical than the shooting of a

raccoon.

And then Peculiar cogitated, wondering what religion could be, if its professors made such slight account of robbery and murder. Was it the observance of certain forms for the propitiation of an arbitrary, capricious, and unamiable Power, who smiled on injustice and barbarity? The more he thought of it, the more inexplicable grew the puzzle. Herbert evidently regarded himself as one of the elect; and Mr. Bloom encouraged him in his security. If heaven was to be won by such kind of service as theirs, Peculiar concluded that he would prefer taking his chances in hell; and so he became a scoffer.

His residence in New Orleans, in enlarging the sphere of his experiences, did not bring him the light that could quicken the

devotional part of his nature. Dwelling most of the time in a hotel which frequently contained three or four hundred inmates, he was thrown among white men of all grades, intellectual and moral. He instinctively felt his superiority both ways to not a few of these. It was therefore a swindling lie to say that the blacks were born to be the thrall of the whites, that slavery was the proper status of the black in this or any country. If it were true that stupid blacks ought to be slaves, so must it be true of the same order of whites.

He heard preachers stand up in their pulpits, and, like the Rev. Dr. Palmer, blaspheme God by calling slavery a Divine institution. "Would it have been tolerated so long, if it were/ not?" they asked, with the confidence of a conjurer when he means to hocus you. To which Peek might have answered, "Would theft and murder have been tolerated so long, if they were not equally Divine?" The Northern clergymen he encountered held usually South-side views of the subject, and so his prejudices against the cloth grew to be somewhat too sweeping and indiscriminate. Judged of by its relations to slavery, religion seemed to him an audacious system of impositions, raised to fortify a lie and a wrong by claiming a Divine sanction for merely human creeds and inventions.

This persuasion was deepened when he found there were intelligent white men utterly incredulous as to a future state, and that the people who went to church were many of them practically, and many of them speculatively, infidels. The remaining fraction might be, for all he knew, not only devout, but good and just. Indeed, he had met some such, but they could be almost counted on his ten fingers.

One day at the St. Charles he overheard a discussion between Mr. James Sterling, an English traveller, and the Rev. Dr. Manners of Virginia. Slaves Sare good listeners and Peculiar had sharpened his sense of hearing by the frequent exercise of it under difficulties. He was an amateur in keyholes. On this occasion he had only to open a ventilating window at the top of a partition, and all that the disputants might say would be for his benefit.

"Will you deny, sir," asked the reverend Doctor, "that! slavery has the sanction of Scripture ?"

"I exclude that inquiry as impertinent at present," said Sterling. "If Scripture authorized murder, then it would not be murder that would be right, but Scripture that would be wrong. And so in regard to slavery. On that particular point Scripture must not be admitted as authoritative. It cannot override the enlightened human conscience. It cannot render null the deductions of science and of reason on a question that manifestly comes within their sphere.

"Ah! if you reject Scripture, then I have nothing more to say," retorted the Doctor. But, after a pause, he added, "Have you not generally found the slaves well treated and contented?"

"A system under which they are well treated and made content," replied Sterling, "is really the most to be deplored and condemned. If slavery could so brutalize men's minds as to make them hug their chains and glory in degradation, it would be, in my eyes, doubly cursed. But it is not so; the slaves are not happy, and I thank God for it. There is manhood enough left in them to make them at least unhappy.' "You assume the equality of the races, interposed the Doctor.

"It is unnecessary for my argument to make any such assumption," said Sterling. "I have found that many black men are superior to many white men, and some of those white men slaveholders. I do not assume this. I know it. I have seen it. But even if the black men were inferior, I hold, that man, as man, is an end unto himself, and that to use him as a brute means to the ends of other men is to outrage the laws of God. I take my stand far above the question of happiness or unhappiness. Have you noticed the young black man, called Peek, who waits behind my chair at table?"

"Yes, a bright-looking lad. He anticipates your wants well. You have feed him, I suppose?"

"I have given him nothing. I have put a few questions to him, that is all; and what I have to say is, that he is superior in respect to brains to nine tenths of the white youth who suck juleps in your bar-rooms or kill time at your billiardtables."

* See James Sterling's "Letters from the Slave States."

"As soon as the Abolitionists will stop their infatuated clamor," replied the Doctor, "the condition of the slave will be gradually improved, and we shall give more and more care to his religious education."

"So long as the negro is ruled by force," returned Mr. Sterling, "no forty-parson power of preaching can elevate his character. It is a savage mockery to prate of duty to one in whom we have emasculated all power of will. We cannot make a moral intelligence of a being we use as a mere muscular force."

"All that the South wants," exclaimed the Doctor, "is to be let alone in the matter of slavery. If there are any alleviations in the system which can be safely applied, be sure they will not be lacking as soon as we are let alone by the fanatics of the North. Leave the solution of the problem to the intelligence and humanity of the South."

"Not while new cotton-lands pay so well! Be sure, reverend sir, if the South cannot quickly find a solution of this slave problem, God will find one for them, and that, trust me, will be a violent one. American civilization and American slavery can no longer exist together. One or the other must be destroyed. For my part, I can't believe it to be the Divine purpose that a remnant of barbarism shall overthrow the civ ilization of a new world. Slavery must succumb."* Sterling, not to raise your voice quite so high when you touch upon these dangerous topics here at the South. I will bid you good evening, sir."

"I recommend you, Mr.

* This last paragraph embodies the actual words of Mr. Sterling, published

in 1856.

2*

CHAPTER VI.

PIN-HOLES IN THE CURTAIN.

"The reader will here be led into the great, ill-famed land of the marvellous." Ennemoser.

HE conversation between the English traveller and the

Virgin Peek jumped down from the table on which he had been listening, refreshed and inspired by the eloquent words he had taken in.

Divinity was brought to a close, and

A week afterwards he made a second attempt to escape from bondage. He was caught and sold to Mr. Carberry Ratcliff, who had an estate on the Red River. Here, failing in obedience to an atrocious order, he received a punishment, the scars of which always remained to show the degree of its barbarity. He was soon after sent to Texas, where he became the slave of Mr. Barnwell.

Here he was at first put to the roughest work in the cottonfield. It tasked all his ingenuity to slight or dodge it. Luckily for him, about the time of his arrival he found an opportunity to make profitable use of the ecclesiastical knowledge he had derived from the Rev. Messrs. Bloom and Palmer.

Braxton, the overseer, had been frightened into a concern for his soul. He had a heart-complaint which the doctor told him might carry him off any day in a flash. A travelling preacher completed the work of terror by satisfying him he was in a fair way of being damned. The prospect did not seem cheerful to Braxton. He had found exhilaration and comfort in whipping intractable niggers. The amusement now began to pall. Besides, the doctor had told him to shun excitement.

In this state of things, enter Mr. Peculiar Institution. That gentleman soon learnt what was the matter; and he contrived that the overseer, seemingly by accident, should overhear him at prayers. Braxton had heard praying, but never any that