Just before dark one evening, I was sitting in my room, meditating on the great theme which absorbs my thoughts. My eye was caught by the bright bolt of my door-lock, the part of the bolt between the lock and the catch showing, beyond question, that the door was fastened. Some one on the outside had turned a key upon me. I had the self-possession to be quiet, for my mind had been calmed by reflecting, in that twilight hour, that now one more day of toil for the poor slaves was over. But as I looked at the bolt, my attention was diverted by something near the top of the door, moving with a strange motion. It was black; it opened and shut. I drew toward it. I found that it was the leg of a turkey, the largest that I ever saw. It was held or fastened in the ventilator over the door, while some one on the outside was evidently pulling the tendons of the claw, making it open and shut. There it performed its tragi-comic gibes for several minutes. I resumed my seat, unterrified, of course, and proceeded to turn the spectre to good account. I addressed it, in a moderate tone; though I think that I used some gesticulation. Said I: Personation of the Slave-power! predatory, grasping, black! thinkest thou a panting fugitive lies hid under my "delusion?" or wouldst thou seize a freeman? The Ægis of Massachusetts is over me. Gape! Yawn! Thou art powerless; but thy impudence is sublime.--Ten or fifteen voices then solemnly chanted these words:-- "Emblem of Slavery Clutching the Free! We've digested the turkey That gobbled oil thee. Sure as THANKSGIVING hastened, Cock-turkey! thy hour, Thanksgivings shall blazon Thy downfall, Slave-power! "The Slave-power has talons, Like Nebuchadnezzar; Slaves are the Lord's flagons Our modern Belshazzar From the Temple of Nature Has stolen away. 'Mean!' 'Mean!' be writ o'er him! Wrath! canst thou de"-- Here screams of laughter, and a scampering in the entry, and the turkey's leg tumbling into my room, ended the trick and their cantillation. I was wishing to hear, in the next stanza, the idea that as the tendons of the claw were worked by a foreign power, so slavery at the South owes its activity to Northern influence. Perhaps it is due to myself to say that the word scampering, a few lines above, has no revengeful reference, in its first syllable, to the author of the trick. The cause of humanity, I find, has a tendency to make one cautious and charitable in his use of words.