of everybody. I am not so extravagantly silly as to hope to do that. But, after all, why wait for a _plan_? Immediate, universal emancipation is not impracticable, and numberless methods might and would at once be devised, if the people of your States were sincere when they profess to desire its accomplishment. Their _real_ wish, however, whatever it may be, need not interfere between your individual pledge, and its prompt fulfilment." Mr. Trueman paused for full five minutes, and, as I peered out from my hiding-place, I thought there was a very quizzical sort of expression on his fine face. "Well, what have you to say?" he at length asked. "It seems to me," Mr. Winston began, in an angry tone, "you speak very flippantly and very wildly about general emancipation. Consider, sir, that slavery is so woven into our society, that there is scarcely a family that would not be more or less affected by a change. Fundamental alterations in society, to be safely made, must be the slow work of years: 'Not the hasty product of a day, But the well-ripened fruit of wise delay.' So it is only by almost imperceptible degrees that the emancipationists and impertinent Abolitionists can ever attain 'the consummation' they pretend to have so much at heart. If they would just stay at home and devote their spare time to cleansing their own garments, leaving us of the South to suffer alone what they are pleased to esteem the evil and sin and curse, the shame, burden and abomination of slavery, we should the sooner discover its blasting enormities, and strive more zealously to abolish them and the institution from which they proceed. Their super-serviceable interference, hitherto, has only riveted and tightened the bondage of those with whom they sympathize; and such a result will always attend it. Our slaves, as at present situated, are very well satisfied, as, indeed, they ought to be: for they are exempt from the anxious cares of the free, as to what they shall eat or what they shall drink, or wherewithal they shall be clothed. Many poor men of our own color would gladly exchange conditions with them, because they find life to be a hard, an incessant struggle for the scantiest comforts, with which our slaves are supplied at no cost of personal solicitude. Besides, sir, our institution of slavery is vastly more burdensome to ourselves than to the negroes for whom you affect so much fraternal love."