Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/274

 class of incendiary or abolition publications, the having which in one's possession would be proof of conspiracy.

With myself it came near going considerably. worse. As ill luck would have it, the only book that I happened to have in my trunk was a volume of Sterne's Sentimental Journey; and that unlucky volume happened to have for a frontispiece a prisoner chained in a dungeon, and underneath, by way of motto, Sterne's celebrated exclamation, "Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still Slavery, still thou art a bitter draught, and though thousands have been made to drink thee, none the less bitter on that account!"

The production of this book, with this horrible frontispiece to it, and incendiary motto, evidently produced a profound sensation. The great eyes of my friend, the Yankee merchant, dilated almost to saucers at the sight of it. But, fortunately, several of the members of the committee were pretty well read in light literature, and were able to assure the assembled multitude that Lawrence Sterne was no abolitionist. It was not difficult to perceive, that two or three of the gentlemen on the committee, though it is by no means easy to rise above the contagion of popular passion, however absurd, were perfectly aware of the ridiculous light in which themselves and the community to which they belonged must appear in my eyes. But they did not dare to suggest any such idea, lest they should be suspected of lack of sensibility to the public danger, or a disposition to shield abolitionists. Indeed, it was quite enough to do away any tendency to laugh — the thought that before a less well-read committee of vigilance, as might easily happen in the rural districts, the having in a man's trunk a stray volume with an unfortunate frontispiece, might subject him to summary punishment as a plotter of rebellion and murder.

Finally, after a most thorough, searching, and deliberate examination, conducted, as the Richmond newspapers of the next day had it, "with the greatest