"If the boy himself be willing, I should be glad to know he was so well provided for," I replied; "though in general, no abolitionist can be more vehemently opposed to negro slavery than I am to this apprenticeship business. What is it but a slavery of the worst description? The master is endowed with irresponsible power, without the interest in the well-being of his slave, which the planter, the actual owner of slaves, ordinarily feels." "You speak strongly," said Col. Donaldson. "I feel strongly on this subject," I answered. "I knew one instance of the effects of this system which I have often thought of publishing to the world, as speaking more powerfully against it than a thousand addresses could do." "Tell it to us, Aunt Nancy," said Robert Dudley. "It is too long to tell now," said I, as the dinner-bell sounded. "Then let us have it this evening," urged Col. Donaldson--"for it is a subject in which I am much interested." Accordingly, in the evening, I gave them the "o'er true tale" of THE YOUNG MISANTHROPE. "In the blue summer ocean, far off and alone," lies a little island, known to mariners in the Pacific only for the fine water with which it supplies them, and for the bold shore which makes it possible for ships of considerable tonnage to lie in quiet near the land. Discovered at first by accident, it has been long, for these reasons, visited both by English and American whalers. A few years since, and no trace of man's presence could be found there beyond the belt of rocks, amidst which arose the springs that were the chief, and indeed only attraction the island presented to the rough, hardy men by whom it had been visited. But within that stony girdle lay a landscape soft and lovely as any that arose within the tropical seas. There the plantain waved its leafy crown, the orange shed its rich perfume, and bore its golden fruit aloft upon the desert air, and the light, feathery foliage of the tamarind moved gracefully to the touch of the dallying breeze. All was green, and soft, and fair, for there no winter chills the life of nature, but, "The bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers." It was a scene which might have seemed created for the abode of some being too bright and good for the common earth of common men, or for some Hinda and Hafed, who, driven from a world all too harsh and evil for their nobler natures, might have found in it a refuge, "Where the bright eyes of angels only Should come around them to behold A paradise so pure and lonely."