“I have said it and repeated it time and agin, and it is true every time, and will keep on bein’ true ‘after my poor, feeble, falterin’ tongue lies silent in the grave.’” I sez this in a kinder him axent, very strikin’ and touchin’, but Col. Seybert wuzn’t touched nor struck by it, as I could see; but I kep’ on all the same. “As I have said, time and agin, this law has stood ever sence creation; and so what is the use of thinkin’ it can be broke up by writin’ on a little slip of paper at Washington, D. C.? “Good land! angels and principalities, and powers, and things present and things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creeter has never made any difference in that law, nor never will. “And then how silly to think a little mite of paper, made out of old rags and straw, mebby, and wrote over with a few man-made words by a steel pen, is a goin’ to overcome this law and vanquish it! Why, it can’t be done. And your talk, and my talk, and talk from all the pulpits and legislators in the world is only a few whiffs of air a blowin’ over this law—a refreshin’ of it, so to speak. “Now, this is a settled thing, and it only remains for us to deal with it the best way we can.” Col. Seybert, I believe, wuz fairly browbeat and stunted to hear such remarkable eloquence from a female; but he wouldn’t demean himself by ownin’ it—in fact, he wanted to give me a rebuke for venturin’ out of what he considered a woman’s spear. He did not dain a reply to me, but he kinder wheeled round in his chair and accosted Cousin John Richard. He hadn’t said a word to him—only when he wuz introduced to him he passed the usual compliments. But he had hearn about him a sight, I know, and his labors amongst the freedmen, and I spoze mebby half of his mean talk had been aimed at that good creeter a layin’ there on the lounge with a rug over his feet and three plasters onto his dear achin’ back. And then he didn’t want to hear me talk any more—I could see that, and he branched right off onto another branch of the subject, and sez he to John Richard: “I should think your preaching would have some effect if you are a preacher of Christ. You ought to teach the niggers to depend on the consolation of the Gospel, and you ought to preach the Gospel of Peace; and that means, I should think, to have the niggers obey their masters, and so save war and bloodshed, instead of inciting them to rebellion and putting absurd ideas into their heads about colonization and a country of their own.” He spoke in a dretful sneerin’, disagreeable tone, that madded me more’n considerable; but John Richard’s face wuz as serene as new milk, and he answered calmly, in a voice kinder low from sickness, but clear as a silver bell: “The Book says, ‘There is a time for peace and a time to resist oppression.’” And I spoke up agin, bein’ bound to take John Richard’s part, and keep him from talkin’ all I could, sick as he wuz, and them plasters all a drawin’.