Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/199

 good food, and all they could eat of it; doctors and medicines when they were sick; and regular work, sir. Not a spell of hard labor for two days, and then a debauch for three. Poor creatures! they are nothing but children, not fit to take care of themselves. I pity them myself; I do indeed. They were much better off before their so-called emancipation,—a thousand times better off."

"That may be so, Mr. Rondelet, I don't deny that there is a great deal of truth in what you say,"—Colonel Lagrange was the speaker,—"but we are a great deal better off without slavery. Emancipation of the blacks, General Ruysdale, you Northern folk talk so much about—it wasn't the emancipation of an inferior African race that was of so much importance, it was the emancipation of the Southern whites, sir, from the curse of slavery, that made Abraham Lincoln a great man; and twenty years from now every intelligent man in the South, sir, will be of my opinion."

Francis Rondelet smiled incredulously at this speech. He could not accept these new opinions, so contradictory to the prejudices of the past. He waved his delicate white hand airily and said,— "I cannot agree with you, Colonel. It must be the end of all order and public decency when men who have no sense of honesty are given an