Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/339

 be admitted a member of any of our most pious Christian churches, that would never be made a ground for refusing him. Church discipline is mighty strict in some matters. I once knew a man excommunicated from a Presbyterian church for sending his children to a dancing school; but I never yet heard of any southern church that ventured to inquire into the paternity of slave children, or the relations of female slaves towards their owners. The violent death of a slave by the hand of the owner may, under certain circumstances, lead to a judicial investigation more or less strict; but, short of that, a Turkish harem is not more safe from impertinent intrusions and inquiries, whether civil or ecclesiastical, than one of our slaveholding families. If-honest Dick Johnson had not acknowledged those children to be his, do you suppose that any body — unless perhaps by way of joke — would have ventured to charge them upon him? His offence consists not in having the children, but in owning them."

"I am afraid," said the New York editor, "you will give our English friend here," nodding at me, "rather a low idea of southern morals. There are some little family secrets that ought not to be spoken of before every body."

"Pity," said the other, "you had not thought of that before. In that case, you might have let Dick Johnson alone. All I insist upon is, that, bating the lack of a little hypocrisy and grimace, and making due allowance for a little extra good nature, he is not so very much worse than his neighbors."

"But," retorted the New York editor, "as a southern man and a slaveholder, can you undertake to say that such conduct as his — this attempt to put blacks and whites on an equality — is not dangerous to the institutions of the country?"

"Not so dangerous by half," was the prompt reply, "as the attempting to commingle and confound with the mass of the slaves the children of free fathers, inheriting from the fathers' side a spirit not very