Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/273

 but at Liverpool; and as I happened to have in my pocket book two or three other letters of credit from the same firm to merchants in Charleston and New Orleans, I at length succeeded in making it understood, that my letter of introduction was not, after all, such palpable evidence of treason and sedition as had, at first, been supposed.

Luckily, my friend, the Yankee merchant, had but very little of a literary turn. After a thorough search of his premises, the committee of inspection were able to discover nothing except a number of picture books belonging to his children, and some twenty or thirty pamphlets, all of which were brought in for the critical inspection of the vigilance committee. At the pie of the picture books, the committee grew very solemn, and the chairman cast another look over the top of his spectacles, half of pity and half of reproach, at the Yankee merchant, whose teeth began to chatter worse than ever, and who rolled up the whites of his great eyes in as perfect an agony as if he had just been caught in the very act of horse stealing or forgery. But after a solemn and serious inspection, during which the whole assembled multitude held their breath, clinched their fists, set their teeth, and looked daggers at the suspected offender, nothing worse appeared than Jack the Giant Killer and Little Red Riding Hood. One very fierce-looking old gentleman on the committee, with puffing cheeks and bloodshot eyes, apparently not very familiar with juvenile literature, and a little the worse for liquor, thought there was something rather murderous in these representations, especially as the pictures were pretty highly colored. But his colleagues assured him that. these were very ancient books, which had been long in circulation, and though, perhaps, considered in themselves, like the Declaration of Independence, the History of Moses and the Deliverance of the Israelites, as recorded in the Bible, or the Virginia Bill of Rights, they might seem to have rather a malign aspect, yet they could not be set down as belonging to that