“‘Really I hardly knew whether to be most angry or amused at the turn things had taken. As to Clara, she thought it a glorious joke, and did nothing for the next month but quiz me about the quadroon girls, and ask me when she might expect them. However, I thought, with the Ethiopian in the ballad, that ‘it would never do to give it up so,’ and accordingly wrote back to Washington that I should be very glad indeed to buy the man. Unfortunately, the man was half-way to Mississippi by that time----Now we are well up that hill and can take a good brush down to the next. G’l-lang, ponies! He-eh! Wake up, Firefly!’ “‘And then?’ “‘Oh, how he got off, after all! It was a special interference of Providence. (G’lang, Star!) The Hon. Secretary felt some compunctions about the fate of his coachman, and hearing that the money was all ready to pay for him, actually paid himself the additional 50 dollars required to bring him back to Washington; so he lives there now a free man with his family--at least, for all I know to the contrary, for I never heard any more about him since.’ “‘And what became of the girls?’ “‘There was a subscription raised for them here. My brother Carl gave something toward it--not that he cared particularly for the young ladies, but because he had a strong desire to sell the gentleman from Louisiana. They were ransomed, and brought here, and put to school somewhere, and a vast fuss made about them--quite enough to spoil them, I’m afraid. And so ends that story. What a joke, to think of a man being worth just as much as a grand piano, and a little more than a pair of ponies!’ “Ashburner thought that Masters treated the whole affair too much as a joke. “‘Tell me,’ said he, ‘if these people came to New York, or you met them traveling, would you associate with them on familiar terms?’ “‘Not with Mr. Bruin, certainly,’ replied Harry. ‘To give the devil his due, such a man is considered to follow an infamous vocation, even in his part of the country.’ “‘But the Honorable Secretary and the other gentlemen, who sell their men to work on the cotton plantations and their women for something worse?’ “‘H-m! A-h! Did you ever meet a Russian?--in your own country, I mean.’ “‘Yes, I met one at dinner once. I wont pretend to pronounce his name.’ “‘Did you go out of the way to be uncivil to him, because he owned serfs?’ “‘No, but I didn’t go out of my way to be particularly genial with him.’ “‘Exactly: the cases are precisely parallel. The Southerners are our Russians. They come up to the North to be civilized; they send their boys here to be educated; they spend a good deal of money here. We are civil to them, but not over genial--some of us, at least, are not.’ * * * * * _Mr. Charles Astor Bristed’s opinions of British officers in general, which will probably set him forward a good deal when he again visits England! Lieutenant Law again!_