Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/357

, "that's a chorus, equal to any thing in Tom Moore, in which three quarters of our young men, and a good many of the old ones, too, for that matter, might join; and yet half of them, perhaps just fresh from love-making to some sable inamorata, will talk to you about the antipathy of the races, and just as likely as not wind up with a discourse on the horrors of amalgamation! What a world of cant, humbug, and hypocrisy we do live in!"

As I remained silent, he still went on — "Supposing, though, this Cassy to have been a sweetheart of yours, — and I can't conceive why else you show so much interest in her, — still I can hardly set you down as a votary of the sable Venus. She rather belonged to the white race; but you know, here at the south, we reckon all slaves as 'niggers,' whatever their color. Just catch a stray Irish or German girl, and sell her, — a thing sometimes done, — and she turns a nigger at once, and makes just as good a slave as if there were African blood in her veins."

"If," I said, commanding myself as well as I could, "you really suppose I have any such interest as you speak of in the girl and her child, you might as well leave off this fooling, and tell me what became of them. We will, if you please, discuss these matters of antipathies, and amalgamation, and the sable Venus, which you seem so fond of, at some other more convenient opportunity."

"Well," said he,"so far as I personally am concerned, I stand quite clear. If I had actually foreseen that, twenty years after, I was to be hauled over the coals by yourself in person, — and, having been watching your eye for the last half hour, I judge you to be one I should not care about quarrelling with, — I could not, on the whole, have done better by the girl than I did.

"Should I say that I made no amorous advances to her, you would scarcely believe me. I did; but she replied with such a mere agony of tears and entreaty, as quite extinguished all my passion, and converted it into Pay,