Finding no encouragement for pursuing this subject further, I turned to the discussion of books and finally asked if she had read an old book which in my day used to be referred to as, “Tom Dixon’s Leopard’s Spots.” She said she had not, but had seen it instanced as a good example of that class of writers who misrepresented the best Southern sentiment and opinion. She stated that her information was that there was not a godly character in the book, that it represented the Southern people as justifying prejudice, and ill treatment of a weaker race, whose faults were admittedly forgivable by reason of circumstances. She also stated that “the culture of the present time places such writers in the same class with that English Lord who once predicted that a steamer could never cross the Atlantic for the reason that she could never carry enough fuel to make the voyage.” “And probably in such cases the wish was father to the thought,” I added. She also had heard of those false prophets whom history had not forgotten, but who lived only in ridicule and as examples of error. She seemed to be ashamed of the ideas once advocated by these men, and charitably dismissed them with the remark that, “It would have been better for the cause of true Christianity had they never been listened to by so large a number of our people, as they represented brute force rather than the Golden Rule.” I heard with rapt attention. Although I had already seen much to convince me of the evolution of sentiment in the South, these words sank deeper than all else. Here was a woman of aristocratic Southern blood, cradled under the hills of secession and yet vehement in denunciation of those whom I had learned to recognize as the beacon lights of Southern thought and purpose! And when I reflected that her views were then the views of the whole South, I indeed began to realize the wonderful transformation I was being permitted to see. I silently prayed, “God bless the New South!” My heart was full, I felt that I had met a soul that was a counterpart of my own,--“Each heart shall seek its kindred heart, and cling to it, as close as ever.” The pent-up feelings of my breast must find some expression of admiration for her lofty ideals of joy, for the triumph I had been permitted to see of truth over error in the subjugation of America’s greatest curse, _prejudice_, and finally of the meeting with a congenial spirit in flesh and blood, and of the opposite sex; which alone creates for man a halo peculiarly its own. I was hardly myself, and I burst forth with, “Irene, are you engaged to the man in the ‘Philippines’?” I was rather presumptuous, but the gentle reply was, “I will tell you some other time”--and we parted. CHAPTER IX THE PRIZE ESSAY