Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/288

 that you should so much have missed the presence of the mother."

It appeared, in the course of our subsequent conversation, that the Montgomerys, having removed, after the loss of their property, to Charleston, had endeavored to support themselves, though much to the scandal of some of their relations, by setting up a female school. It was not long, however, before Miss Montgomery attracted the admiration of a wealthy gentleman of that city, a Mr Telfair, whose wife she became, and by whom she had an only son — the young clergyman who had so favorably impressed me, and in whose face, striking as it was, there had yet appeared something familiar, which I now traced back to my recollection of the mother.

"Besides," added Mr Mason, "since you take so much interest in my system of plantation arrangements, let me tell you that Mr. Telfair is a main spoke in the wheel. Not only does he do all the marrying and christening, services thought, both at Carleton Hall and Poplar Grove, to be quite indispensable, but the keeping those who misbehave at home on Sunday is one of the most effective punishments which I can inflict. It is a great proof,' he added, "of my young friend's gifts, not only that he has so completely eclipsed the itinerant Methodists, and the vinegar-visaged Presbyterian exhorters, who used formerly to predominate in this neighborhood, but that even black parson Tom himself, for a long — time the admiration not only of my two plantations, — but I may say of the whole county, has been content to restrain his gifts,and to subside into the humble position of clerk and catechist."

Mr Telfair, as I afterwards learnt, had, through the influence of his mother, upon whom, during her state of poverty, religious ideas had made a dee impression, been devoted from an early age to the work of the Christian ministry. From a child, he had esteemed himself set aside for that service; and — having been admitted to holy orders, had given