“Truly, if she hath not now, she will have there a monument of gold,”
Mr. Hadger piously pursues, adding a sigh.
“There! there!—my neuralgy; it’s all down my left side. I’m not long
for this world, you see!” Mrs. Swiggs breaks out suddenly, then
twitches her head and oscillates her chin. And as if some electric
current had changed the train of her thoughts, she testily seizes hold
of her Milton, and says: “I have got my Tom up again-yes I have, Mr.
Hadger.”
Mr. Hadger discovers the sudden flight her thoughts have taken: “I am
sure,” he interposes, “that so long as Sister Slocum remains a member
of the Tract Society we may continue our patronage.”
Mrs. Swiggs is pleased to remind Mr. Hadger, that although her means
have been exceedingly narrowed down, she has not, for the last ten
years, failed to give her mite, which she divides between the house of
the “Foreign Missions,” and the “Tract Society.”
A nice, smooth-faced man, somewhat clerically dressed, straight and
portly of person, and most unexceptionable in his morals, is Mr.
Hadger. A smile of Christian resignation and brotherly love happily
ornaments his countenance; and then, there is something venerable about
his nicely-combed gray whiskers, his white cravat, his snowy hair, his
mild brown eyes, and his pleasing voice. One is almost constrained to
receive him as the ideal of virtue absolved in sackcloth and ashes. As
an evidence of our generosity, we regard him an excellent Christian,
whose life hath been purified with an immense traffic in human—(perhaps
some good friend will crack our skull for saying it).
In truth (though we never could find a solution in the Bible for it),
as the traffic in human property increased Mr. Hadger’s riches, so also
did it in a corresponding ratio increase his piety. There is, indeed, a
singular connection existing between piety and slavery; but to analyze
it properly requires the mind of a philosopher, so strange is the
blending.
Brother Hadger takes a sup of ice-water, and commences reading Sister
Slocum’s letter, which runs thus: “NEW YORK, May -, 1850. “DEAR BROTHER
HADGER:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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