and then a faint fleeting smile passed over her face. It was over, I knew not how I got home again. It was a melancholy scene. The violent and uncontrolled grief of the poor sister - the savage looks and muttered threats of the brother-the prayers of the priest, and that poor insensible form, so deaf and blind to all the earthly agitation around her. So near yet so far! What could be done in the way of pecuniary help to the sister I did; she had no repugnanec to accept it. She saw how grieved I was, and she attributed the fatal end to cold caught on the Lagoon. I might have been unpardonably careless, but nothing more. The brother suspected more. A dark red suffised his face as I pressed my offers of service on him as on the rest of the family. He declined with an oath, and as I passed him he drew aside as if my touch was odions to him. At one time, such an event would have well nigh broken my heart-now, I was unhappy, I cursed fate, thought myself under an evil doom, which entailed guilt upon me without any sin of my -own, and that was all. This rebellious bitterness of feeling left a corroding power, which served still further to deteriorate and weaken my already perverted nature.
THE SLAVE DIFFICULTY IN AMERICA.
In a single line, in the smallest type, used in obscure corners of American newspapers, there is now conveyed to as one of the most significant and portentous incidents of our time. Probably not one reader in a thousand of the few English readers of American journals will have taken any particular notice of that single line which will be immortal as history, however carelessly passed over to-day as news. "We pray for the slave." In order to understand its full significance, we must cast a brief glance backwards to certain incidents of a quarter of a century ago.
In 1835, Mr. Calhoun, the honest fanatic—not to say monomaniac—on behalf of Slavery, was telling European visitors, and New England citizens whom he chanced to meet, that the subject of Slavery would never be introduced in Congress. He was told that he might as well undertake to hedge in Orion and the Pleiades as lock up from popular use any topic of essential interest. He was positive, however; and no man's words went further with his generation. Slavery was a fundamentally necessary institution; republican liberties depended upon it; yet (or therefore), the subject would never be discussed in Congress. Within two years the roof of the Capitol rang with the shouts and cries of those who chose to speak on slavery and those who did not choose to hear. Ex-president Adams (father of the American Minister now in London), spoke upon it day after day, presenting petitions from the Abolitionists, and refusing to be put down, but with the right of petition itself. That right was put down: but it could not be for long: and before Mr. Calhoun died there was no day of the session on which something was not said about Slavery; and no subject was introduced, however remote, which did not issue in a discussion of the dreaded topic. In dying, Mr. Calhoun declared his country lost. He had failed to preclude dangerous discussion; slavery was doomed, and the Republic with it.
While he was confident that the subject would never be mentioned in the Capitol, the clergy of the Free States were certain that it would never be spoken of from the pulpit. A New England clergyman, however, even at that day, made the unheard of venture of praying for the slaves. It should be understood that all religious denominations there enter into a fuller detail of the kinds and conditions of men for whom they pray than is usual here; and the slaves have been the only class omitted. The Reverend Samuel J. May, then of Massachusetts, was supposed to be the first who supplied the omission; and his name will be preserved for the act. Next, a man of a very high quality did the same brave deed;—Dr. Follen, the learned Professor, the accomplished scholar, the nearest friend of Dr. Channing, the man known as a patriot in his native Germany, as a Christian divine in England, and in America from that moment as an abolitionist. One winter night he preached in Boston, and his prayer that night thrilled through the city, and overthrew the prospects of his life. After intercession for all orders of public men, and for sufferers under various woes, the words occurred, "We pray for the miserable, degraded, insulted slave, in chains of iron and chains of gold." From that hour the pulpits of Boston were closed to him; and Dr. Channing suffered keenly from the refusal of his flock to allow his friend to preach in his church. The scandalised clergy taught, and the public accepted the teaching, that they had Scripture for their guide, because they were "if possible, as much as lay in them, to live peaceably with all men; and silence was the only way to peace and quiet where slavery was in question.—Things had so far changed in twenty years (which is a mere span in the great spaces of history), that, when the long-free negro, Anthony Burns, was awaiting his fate in Boston, and was to know next day whether he was to be returned into slavery, and craved the prayers of all Christians, his request was, in some pulpits, noticed and allowed. Some of the Boston clergy did, and some did not, invite the prayers of their congregation for him. That was seven years ago; and the progress of opinion and feeling must have been much more rapid since; for we now see,—what it would have killed Mr. Calhoun outright to have foreknown,—that intercession for the slave has found a place in the prayers of Congress.
On the opening of the present session in the House of Representatives, there was solemn and special prayer, as at the opening of each session; and the specifications were as numerous as they ever are. Among them may be seen for the first time the words, "We pray for the slave." The abolitionists who have laboured in faith that this hour must come, when the slave should be openly admitted into fellowship with men and citizens, must read these few words with strong emotion. They understand the full import of this conversion of a chattel into a man who needs special prayers;
