Why, we had never dreamed of upholdin’ ’em, nor thought on’t; but he felt so. He threw stuns fearful at the South, and at Josiah and me because we didn’t jine in with him and rip and tear as he did. And them stuns kinder hurt me after a while; and so, when he asked me for the seventh time: [Illustration: DEACON HENZY.] “Why didn’t they free their slaves before they wuz obleeged to?” Then I sez, “It wuz probable for the same reason that you didn’t liberate Zekiel—mostly selfishness!” “What! what did you say?” He could not believe his ear; he craned his neck, he turned the other ear. He wuz browbeat and stunted; and agin he sez: “_What_ did you say?” And I sez agin, calm as cream, but sharp and keen as a simiter, “I said it wuz selfishness, Deacon, and the power of old custom—jest the reasons why you didn’t free Zekiel.” His linement fell more’n a inch. Like the Queen of Sheba before Solomon (only different sex) he had no spirit left in him. He never had mistrusted; it made him feel so awful good to run the South further down than anything or anybody wuz ever run—he never mistrusted that he had ever done anything onjust, or mean, or selfish. He loved to deplore Southern sins, but never looked to see if Northerners wuzn’t committin’ jest as ojeus ones. I mean good, well-meanin’ Christian men, not to say anything about our white slaves in the cities who make shirts for five cents apiece, and sign their contracts with their blood. Nor the old young children who are shut away from God’s sunshine and air in Northern manufactories and mines, and who are never free to be out under the beautiful sky till the sun has gone down or the grass is growin’ between it and their hollow, pitiful faces. Nor the droves of street ruffians and beggars whose souls and bodies suffer and hunger jest as much under the Northern Star as under the Southern Cross. No, I didn’t mean any of these, but jest respectable church-goers like Deacon Henzy. And he, like so many others, wuz jest as blind to the idee as if he had been born with leather spectacles on and had wore ’em ever sence. It is a good thing for folks North or South to have their blinders tilted up a little now and then, and get a glimpse of daylight into their orbs. I had tilted up hisen, and wuzn’t sorry a mite, not a mite. He had been a throwin’ stuns powerful, and he had got hit from one. And pretty soon, after settin’ demute for quite a spell, he got up and left for home, feelin’ and actin’ quite meek and humble-sperited for him. And I have hearn sence, and it comes straight to me—Zekiel’s mother told Miss Biddlecom’s Liza, and Liza’s sister-in-law told it to the Editor of the _Augur’ses_ wife’s mother-in-law, and she told it to she that wuz Celestine Gowdey, and she that wuz Celestine told old Miss Minkley, and she told me—it come straight—that Deacon Henzy give Zekiel that very night a dollar bill, and from what I hear he has mellered up and used him first rate ever sence.