_Apropos_ of the aforesaid teachings, Ratcliff was very willing that his predestined victim should be piously inclined. It would rather add to the piquancy of her degradation. He wavered somewhat as to whether she should be a Protestant or a Catholic, but finally left the whole matter to Mrs. Gentry. That profound theologian had done her best to lead Clara into her own select fold, and, as she thought, had succeeded; but Clara was pretty sure to take up opinions the reverse of those held by her teacher. So, after sitting in weariness of spirit under the ministry of the Rev. Dr. Palmer in the morning, the perverse young lady would ventilate her religious conceptions by reading Fenelon, Madame Guyon, or Zschokke in the evening. Mrs. Gentry believed in secession, and raved like a Pythoness against the cowardly Yankees. Clara, seeing a United States flag trampled on and torn in the street, secured a rag of it, secretly washed it, and placed it as a holy symbol on her bosom. Mrs. Gentry expatiated to her pupils on the righteousness and venerableness of slavery. Clara cut out from a pictorial paper a poor little dingy picture of Fremont, and concealed it between two leaves of her Bible, underlining on one of them these words: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Esha, the colored cook, a slave, was Clara’s fast friend in all her youthful troubles. Esha had passed through all degrees of slavery,—from toiling in a cotton-field to serving as a lady’s maid. Having had a child, a little girl, taken from her and sold, she ever afterwards refused to be again a mother. The straight hair, coppery hue, and somewhat Caucasian cast of features of this slave showed that she belonged to a race different from that of the ordinary negro. She had been named Ayesha, after one of Mahomet’s wives. She generally wore a Madras handkerchief about her head, and showed a partiality for brilliant colors. Many were the stealthy interviews that she and Clara enjoyed together. Said Esha, on one of these occasions: “Don’t b’leeb ’em, darlin’, whan dey say de slabe am berry happy, an’ all dat. No slabe dat hab any sense am happy. He know, he do, dat suffn’s tuk away from him dat God gabe him, and meant he sh’d hole on ter; and so he feel ollerz kind o’ mean afore God an’ man too; an’ I ’fy anybody, white or black, to be happy who feel dat ar way.” “But it isn’t the slave’s fault, Esha, that he’s a slave.” “It’s de slabe’s fault dat he stay a slabe, darlin’,” said the old woman, with a strange kindling of the eyes. “But den de massa hab de raisin’ ob him, an’ so take good car’ ter break down all dar am of de man in de poor slabe; an’ de poor slabe hab no larnin’, and dunno whar’ to git a libbin’ or how to sabe hisself from starvin’. An’ if he run away, de people Norf send him back.”