In a short time the happy couple were comfortably seated on the sofa in the parlor of the old homestead, and his arm was as far round her waist as it would go. Here we will bid them adieu. Ann Harriet being married, she will have no more _miss_-haps--albeit at some future time something may be heard of Captain and Mrs. Dobbs--and all the little Dobbses. FOOTNOTES: [8] Broken-up apple pie. THE UNION. IV. The census tables of the North and the South, and especially of Massachusetts, Maryland, and South Carolina, heretofore presented, have proved that slavery greatly retarded the progress of population, wealth, science, education, and religion. The comparison now instituted between New York and Virginia demonstrates the same law. By the census, the population of Virginia in 1790 was 748,308, and in 1860, 1,596,318, making the ratio of increase 113.32 percent. In 1790, New York numbered 340,120, and in 1860, 3,880,735, the ratio of increase being 1,040.99. (Table 1, Prelim. Census Rep., p. 132.) Thus, the rate of increase in New York exceeded that of Virginia more than nine to one. In 1790, the population of Virginia was largely more than double that of New York. In 1860, the population of New York was very largely more than double that of Virginia. In 1790, Virginia, in population, ranked first of all the States, and New York the fifth. In 1860, they had reversed their positions, and New York was the first, and Virginia the fifth. (Rep., p. 120.) At the same rate of progress, from 1860 to 1900, as from 1790 to 1860, Virginia, retaining slavery, would have sunk from the first to the twenty-first State, and would still continue, at each succeeding decade, descending the inclined plane toward the lowest position of all the States. Such has been, and still continues to be, the effect of slavery, in dragging down that once great State from the first toward the last in rank in the Union. But if, as in the absence of slavery must have been the case, Virginia had increased from 1790 to 1860 in the same ratio as New York, her population in 1860 would have been 7,789,141, and she must always have remained the first in rank of all the States.