Annie was so beautiful that it was a delight to look at her lovely face, listen to her musical voice, and watch her graceful motions. She fully appreciated her own charms, and had a way of making others appreciate them also. She had many more friends than Miriam, for who could resist the charm of her face and manner?

She had become quite accomplished, for she possessed a good deal of talent, but was worldly minded, vain, and selfish. It may be matter of surprise that such a girl should have been my intimate friend, and still stranger that she should have been the friend of Miriam; but she was lively and agreeable, and when we were children together we did not care to analyze her character, and when we knew her thoroughly we still loved her—from habit, I suppose. At all events, whatever were the sympathies which bound us together, we continued firm friends until we were eighteen, when we left Madame Orleans' school, where we had resided for four years.

At that time Annie returned to our native village, while Miriam and I went to a Southern city, intending to spend the winter with her uncle's family; but we liked our new home so much that we prolonged our visit two years. After we had been there a few months, by some chance, which I have now forgotten, Henry Ackermann came to the city where we resided. He was a few years older than we, but had been one of our playmates in childhood. His parents had removed from our native village, and gone to California some years before, when the gold fever was at its height, since which time we had heard little about them, and Henry had nearly faded out of our recollections, until now he suddenly appeared, destined to be the controlling fate in the life of one of us, for Miriam and he soon grew to love one another; though what affinity there was between their natures I never could imagine. But he told me that he loved her, and she told me that she was very happy, and I was bound to believe them both, and thought that on the whole they would be a better-matched couple than most of those I saw about me.

It is needless to say much of their courtship. Their engagement was not made public, therefore it was not necessary to make a parade of their affection before indifferent acquaintance, Miriam's love, like that of all proud, reserved natures, was intense. Ackermann's attentions to her were graceful and delicate, and he ever manifested toward her in his whole manner that silent devotion, unobtrusive and indescribable, which is so gratifying to woman. It was evident that he understood her thoroughly: whether he appreciated her as thoroughly was another matter, about which I had my doubts.

It was true that strange rumors had floated from California to our distant little city in regard to Ackermann. Evil rumors they were—they could scarcely be called rumors—nobody repeated them, nobody believed them—and yet they were whispered into the ear so stealthily that it seemed as if they were breathed by the very air which surrounded Ackermann. I paid no heed to them. Miriam heard them, did not care for them—why should I?

Months passed away—happily to the lovers—pleasantly to me. Circumstances then compelled Ackermann to return to our village, while Miriam felt it to be her duty to remain where she was; but she expected to follow him in a few months at latest. He carried with him a letter of introduction to Annie, in which Miriam told her of her engagement to the bearer, and requested Annie to be his friend for her sake. This was soon answered by a characteristic letter from Annie congratulating Miriam on her choice, pronouncing Ackermann the most delightful of men, etc.

During the winter which followed, Miriam seemed quietly happy and always pleasant and cheerful. Henry's letters were frequent, and so were Annie's. I did not see the former, but they appeared to afford a great deal of satisfaction to Miriam. Annie's letters were as lively and merry as herself, and contained frequent hints that the devoted attentions of a certain Mr. Etheridge—a wealthy, middle-aged suitor—were not entirely disagreeable to her; that she thought she should like right well to be mistress of his fine mansion; with much more nonsense of the same kind.

I should have mentioned that Miriam had never told her lover of the peculiar gifts of prophecy and second sight which she had, or fancied that she had. She was too happy at the time he was with her to be visited by her 'visions.' I thought they had ceased altogether, and I think Miriam believed they had, and was happy to be done with them forever.

I was quite surprised then to see her walk into my room one day in a hurried manner, with a face ghastly pale, and eyes unusually distended, and gazing at me with a wild, fixed stare. She trembled exceedingly, and tried to speak, but the words refused to come at her bidding. I was much alarmed, and, remembering there was a glass of wine in the closet, I brought it to her, but she motioned it away. I opened the window, and the rush of cold air revived her. She sat down by it, and after a little time, she said:

'Hester, do you remember the little sitting room of Annie's, at the foot of the back stairs, with windows opening into the garden?'

'Yes, I remember it perfectly. Why do you ask?'

'She has had it newly furnished, and very elegantly.'

'How do you know?'

'Because I was there this afternoon; spent some time in it.'

'You! in Annie's room!'

I was there, in Annie's room—that is, the only part of me that is worth anything; my body remained here, in my own room, I suppose.'

I saw at once that the old spell was on her again, and, as I made it a point to fall in with her humor on such occasions, I said:

'Well, what did you see there?'

'I saw an open piano, and books and music scattered around. There were a great many flowers in the room. A bright fire was in the grate, and Pompey—the house dog—was stretched on a rug before it. A large easy-chair, covered with blue damask, stood near the fireplace. Henry Ackermann was seated in it. Annie was kneeling before him. He talked to her while he stroked her hair. I heard every word that he said.'

Here she paused. I was getting quite excited with her narrative, but I spoke as calmly as I could:

'You have only fancied these things, Miriam. You are ill.'

'The material part of my nature may be ill. I do not know. But the immaterial is sound and healthy. It sometimes leaves its grosser companion, and makes discoveries for itself. This is not the first time it has happened, as you well know. I have been particular in my description, in order that I might convince you that I have actually been there. You know that the description I have given is entirely different from the appearance of Annie's room in former times. I have never heard that she had newly furnished it. Write to her, and ask her to describe her room to you, and you will find that I have seen all that I have told you.'

Finding her so calm, and so willing to reason on what she had seen, I ventured to ask:

'And what did Ackermann say to her?'

'Only a very little thing,' said she, with bitter emphasis. 'That he loved her—and admired me; she stirred the depths of his heart—I excited his intellect; she was his darling—I, his sphinx.'

'Are you sure it is not all a dream?'

'I have not closed my eyes to-day.'

I did not know what to say to her. I still thought what she had related was but a delusion, but to her it was a reality, and I knew her outward calmness was but the expression of intense excitement of mind. Thinking I might divert her mind, I read to her a letter I had received but a few minutes before. It was from my sister, who had just returned from Europe, with her husband and children; and had taken a house in our native village. She wished me to come to her at once. At any other time Miriam would have manifested the greatest interest in this communication. It had been a source of regret to her that I was separated from this sister, who was the only near relative I had. Now she sat, perfectly unmoved, gazing out into the sunshine as if it bewildered her. I did not know whether she had heard a word I said. I laid down the letter, and took up a book, glancing at her occasionally. I continued reading for about two hours, while she sat there as if turned to stone. Then she turned to me and said:

'Hester, would you not like to see your sister very much?'

'Very much.'

'Then let us return home at once.'

'I am very willing.'

'Mr. Sydenham leaves here to-morrow night for New York. Let us go with him.'

I hesitated. It seemed such a hasty departure from the friends who had been so kind to us, but a glance at the pale, eager face of Miriam decided me. I consented.

The nest day brought a letter from Ackermann. Miriam showed it to me. It was the only letter of his I was ever permitted to read. It was a good letter—very lover-like, but earnest and manly. It seemed to me the truth of the writer was palpable in every line.

'Of course this has removed all your doubts,' I said, as I returned the letter to Miriam.

'It has not shaken my faith in the evidence of the finest of my senses,' was her only reply.

Since we had left our pretty little village, a railroad track had been laid through, it. The depot was near Annie's house. As we had apprised no one of our arrival, we found ourselves alone on the platform when we stepped out of the cars.

'Let us call and see Annie,' said Miriam.

'Before you visit your father and mother?' said I, surprised.

'This is the hour Ackermann usually visits her.'

'I will go with you.'

It was but a few minutes' walk. We felt perfectly at home there. We opened the front door, and walked in without ceremony. No one was in the front rooms. We passed quickly through them into the little room at the foot of the back stairs. I noticed the furniture as soon as I entered. It was new, and was arranged pretty much as Miriam had described it. Ackermann and Annie stood by the window looking into the garden. I am not sure, but I think he was holding her hand. They turned as we entered, and, for a few minutes, were speechless with amazement. Annie was the first to recover herself.

'What a delightful surprise!' she exclaimed, running toward us; but she stopped before she was half across the room. Something in Miriam's manner arrested her. Ackermann's perceptions were quicker. He saw at one glance that Miriam knew all, and, though very much agitated, he stood, looking defiantly at her. She took no notice of Annie, but said to Ackermann:

'I trusted you. You have deceived me. I believed in your love so fully that I would have been yours faithfully until death. You lightly threw mine away. I thought your words of love so sacred that I kept them hid in my heart from the sight of the most faithful friends. You have made mine the subjects of jest. But I do not come here to reproach you. Henceforth you are nothing to me. I came to demand my ring.'

'I have no ring of yours,' said he, with calm decision. 'This ring that I wear you put upon my finger, and told me not to part with it under any circumstances. You charged me to wear it until death. It is mine. I will not part with it, even to you.'

Miriam looked at him incredulously for a moment. Her fortitude began to give way.

'I do not know,' she said slowly, 'why you wish to keep that ring. You can never look at it without thinking of me, and of the words of love I have spoken to you. It is hateful to me to think that you have anything to remind you of the past. For this reason I want the ring. I will not wear it. I will not keep it. I will destroy it utterly. But by the memory of my past trust, I beseech you to give me that ring.'

A sneer curled the lip of Ackermann.

'I will not give it to you!' he said, decidedly.

Miriam did not look at him now, but at the ring. It glowed on his hand like a flame; for it was set with a cluster of diamonds.

'It will ruin you,' she said, raising her eyes slowly, and fixing them on his face. 'It will be your curse.'

She turned and left the room. Ackermann looked displeased, and annoyed. Annie was pale and frightened. I did not know whether to follow Miriam, or remain to hear Annie's explanations. I finally decided to do neither, and, walking out of the open window into the garden, I took another route to my sister's.

They say that no nature is thoroughly evil, that every man has some redeeming qualities. This is probably true, and I suppose Ackermann had his virtues, but I was never able to discover any. The only sides of his character presented to my observation were evil, and wholly evil. He loved Annie, it is true, but it was an unnatural, selfish, exacting love. Such a love is a curse to any woman, and it was doubly so to Annie, who loved him too entirely to see any faults in him, and was too weak minded to resist his merciless exactions. So thoroughly selfish was he that, notwithstanding his love for Annie, he would have married Miriam if she had not so peremptorily broken the engagement. Miriam was very wealthy, while Annie was comparatively poor. Ackermann himself was worth nothing. Why he persisted in keeping the ring I never knew, unless it was that Miriam's proud contempt and indifference roused his malignant temper to oppose her in the only way which lay in his power. He possessed the art of making himself agreeable, and had a very fair seeming, so that when his engagement to Annie was made public, she was warmly congratulated. His former engagement to Miriam was unknown, even to her own parents.

I saw but little of Ackermann and Annie, and never met them but in public. His wickedness and her weakness made them both contemptible in my eyes. And my mind was occupied in other matters. Miriam resolved to make the tour of Europe, and I was to accompany her—for she would take no denial. For many weeks we were busied in preparations for our departure; Miriam had settled all her affairs satisfactorily, and we were thinking of making the last farewells, when she was taken ill. The doctors said it was an organic disease of the heart. This was an hereditary disease in the family, but Miriam up to the time of her acquaintance with Ackermann had been entirely free from any symptom of it, or of any particular disease whatever. Whether this sudden exhibition of it was the effect of natural causes, or was produced by mortified love and pride, I leave the reader to conclude.

I was her constant attendant during her sickness. She could scarcely bear me out of her sight. She had never spoken to me of Ackermann since the interview in Annie's room. Now she seemed to take delight in talking about him, and I was amazed at the intense hatred with which she regarded him. She was gentle and patient under her sufferings, and tender and loving at all times, except when speaking of him. Then all the bad passions of her nature were aroused. It was in vain that I represented to her that at such a time she should endeavor to be at peace with all the world, and forgive as she hoped to be forgiven.

'If I have sinned against my God, as Henry Ackermann has sinned against me, I neither expect or wish to be forgiven,'—was the only reply she would make to such arguments. She had not the slightest feeling of ill will against Annie; she spoke of her as a misguided, loving girl; but often repeated the assertion that Ackermann and Annie would never be married.

The physicians were inclined to think that Miriam would recover from this attack, but she knew, she said, that she must die, and she exacted a promise from me that I would watch over her body until it was consigned to the grave, imploring me not to let indifferent people be with her after death. I readily gave the promise, little knowing what a fearful obligation I was taking upon myself.

One morning I left Miriam's bedside, and walked through the village in order to get some exercise, and breathe the fresh air. I remember the day well. It was in the latter part of May—a warm, sweet, sunny day, with enough of chilliness in the air to give a zest to walking. I was surprised at the ripeness and luxuriance of the foliage, so early for a New England spring; but I was still more surprised at the aspect of our usually silent village. The streets were full of men hurrying to and fro, and groups of men, and women, too, stood at some of the corners. To my utter amazement I learned that Annie had disappeared mysteriously the night before. She had left home alone early in the evening, saying she was going to the river, and had not returned. Search was made for her during the night in all the houses of the village; that morning the river had been dragged; but not the slightest trace of Annie was anywhere to be found. Of course everybody was in a state of intense excitement. Ackermann was represented to me as almost distracted with grief, but he had been active in conducting the search for her.

I thought it best to tell this to Miriam as soon as I returned. It produced a strange effect upon her. It gave her a most intense desire for life.

'I do not desire life for myself,' said she to me, the next day, 'nor for any happiness it could confer upon me, for it has no gift that I value; but I wish to live that I may show Ackermann to the world, as he is, false, and cruel, and revengeful. I feel that I would have the power to do it, had I but health and strength; but what can a dead body do? Can the soul return to it again? Where does the soul go?'

I made no reply to this. I had gone over this ground very often with Miriam. It was not strange that one who had had such remarkable mental experiences should be a believer in spiritual agencies. She was also a firm believer in all the doctrines of the Bible, but she always maintained that this sacred book nowhere taught that the soul, on its release from the body, went directly to heaven. She argued that it was impossible for it to go there immediately. Then where did it go? These ideas disposed her to a mystical kind of reading, with which I did not sympathize, and in which I never indulged.

I stood at the window some time, looking out, but seeing nothing, for I was thinking how strange it was that two girls so entirely opposite as Miriam and Annie should love the same man, and he so different from both. I was aroused by Miriam's voice hurriedly calling me. I hastened to her side. Never shall I forget her eyes as she fixed them upon me. The pupils were dilated, and intensely black, while they shone so brilliantly that it seemed as if a fire were burning within them. She spoke eagerly:

'Promise me once more, Hester, that you will not leave my body, after the soul has left it, until it is laid in the grave, and that you will not let idle curiosity come and gaze at it.'

I readily gave her this promise, thinking it was very little to do for a dying friend. The unnatural expression faded from her eyes. She seemed entirely satisfied.

It was late in the afternoon that I was aroused from a sound sleep by the intelligence that Miriam was dead. She died while asleep, without a struggle, or a groan. I called in Mrs. Grove, the housekeeper, who had been devotedly attached to Miriam, and we dressed her in a white robe, and scattered fragrant flowers around her, to take away, if possible, the horror and ghastliness of death. She did not look at all like the Miriam I had known and loved. Her features were sharp and pinched, and her face looked careworn, and anxious—if anything so lifeless can be said to have expression.

No one came into the room that evening but the family, and they retired early, and left me alone with the dead. Mrs. Grove sat up all night in the dining room, which was separated from Miriam's room by a narrow entry. She would have remained with me, but I saw that she was very nervous and timid, and insisted that she should leave me. I could not understand her feeling. I felt not the slightest fear of the inanimate body before me, or of the disembodied spirit. She had been my friend during her whole life—why should she harm me now?

I put out the light, and seated myself by the open window at the foot of the bed. The round, full moon, in a cloudless sky, made every object in the room and out of it as distinct as in the day. I looked at the fountain, which spun its threads of light under the window; and at the little flowers just peeping above the ground; and at the foliage, with its many-shaded green; and occasionally I looked at the body stretched upon the bed. And each time that I looked it seemed to me that it gently stirred. This did not startle me at all, for I was accustomed to the appearance of death. Who that has lost a friend does not find it impossible to realize that the form is utterly without life? And who has ever gazed long at a corpse without fancying that it moved? So again and again I looked at Miriam, and again and again I fancied there was a slight motion, scarcely perceptible. At last the constant repetition of this feeling made me uneasy, and to quiet my mind, and satisfy myself that it was only seeming, I went to the bed and bent over Miriam.

My blood ran cold in my veins, as I encountered the eyes of Miriam, open, dilated, and black, fixed upon mine! There was a strange light in them. It scarcely looked like life, and yet it surely could not be death. It seemed more like a light shining far down some black and deep sepulchre. Half frenzied with terror, and scarcely knowing what I did, I forced down the eyelids and shut out that hateful light; but the instant I removed my fingers the eyes opened upon me again. This time it seemed the expression was more life-like—there was eagerness in it. Again I pressed down the eyelids, but now there was resistance to my touch. I could feel it. The hands, which had lain quiet on her breast, were convulsively raised. I stepped back from the bed, and Miriam sat upright! Incredible as it may appear, the frenzy of my terror was gone. Miriam looked like herself. The ghastly pallor of death, the sunken cheek, the pinched features were all there; but there was something in the face which made me think of the Miriam of olden days—the Miriam I had known before this last terrible sickness came upon her. I was not entirely free from fear, but it was a charmed fear. I never thought of calling any one. I could do nothing but watch Miriam.

After a few convulsive efforts she got off the bed, and stood erect for a moment. I remember thinking that all this was very strange, and wondering what she would do next. She moved slowly to the door. I followed her with my eyes. At the door she turned, and looked at me. And then there rushed upon my mind the whole weight and responsibility of the promise I had made her, that I would never leave her body until it was consigned to the tomb! I comprehended that I must follow her, and mechanically I obeyed the impulse. She took her way through the dining room. Mrs. Grove was sitting in an easy-chair, fast asleep. I wondered how she could sleep with this awful presence in the room. Miriam did not glance at her, but passed out of the front door, into the street. My mind was in a constant state of activity. My will was under the guidance of Miriam. I had no control over it. My thoughts were my own, and wandered from object to object. As we were passing down the steps I thought how beautifully the river would look in the moonlight; but Miriam turned in an opposite direction from the river, and I was disappointed. How fearfully quiet was everything! I would have given worlds, had I possessed them, if I could have seen a familiar face. I even had a half-formed thought to scream loudly for help, but I could not do it. My will was utterly powerless. We approached the house where Ackermann resided, and I was seized with horror, thinking it possible that she might murder him while I witnessed the bloody deed, powerless to prevent it. But she never once looked at the house while passing it. This phantom—whatever it might be—seemed to be entirely free from human feelings. I do not think this idea tended to reassure me, and when we left the closely built street, and merged into the open country, where the fields stretched away on every side of us, with no life in them, and where loneliness and desolation reigned supreme, I felt a new terror, and longed to turn, and flee back to human life. But no! I must follow my conductress wherever she chose to lead me!

Miriam walked slowly at first, but had increased her speed as she proceeded, and now she was walking so swiftly that I could scarcely keep pace with her. I saw white marbles gleaming among the trees at the top of a hill, and knew that we were approaching the graveyard. It was a dreary-looking place—a disgrace to the village. The stone wall was in a dilapidated condition, and in some places there were gaps in it. The graves were overgrown with rank weeds, and many old gray tombstones lay on the ground. The gate was swinging loosely on its hinges, and we passed swiftly through it. And now, thought I, the mystery is solved. Miriam is going to bury herself, and has brought me to fill the grave, so that no one may see her body but me, I can never, never do it, if she fixes those terrible eyes upon me! An open grave lay in our pathway. The red clay soil, which was heaped around it, was moist. I felt my feet sink in it as we passed over it—for around the grave we went on our swift, unerring course—although I knew the grave had been that day dug for Miriam! Did she know this? If so, she gave no sign of that knowledge, and I breathed more freely when we were fairly out of the graveyard. On the other side of it was a thick wood, into which I had never penetrated. Indeed the thorny thickets, and low, poisonous bushes made it impenetrable to any one, and yet it was into this wood that Miriam led the way. How we pushed through it I do not know. My clothes were nearly torn into rags, and so were Miriam's. My flesh was torn also in several places. I had no means of knowing whether hers was torn also.

At last she stopped before a mass of—but my heart grows sick and my brain dizzy when I think of that—I cannot describe it, but I knew by unmistakable evidences that the lost Annie was found!

I looked at Miriam, but she did not return my glance. I could not see her face. She stopped only a moment, and continued her walk. And now I followed fearlessly. As soon as I discovered that the phantom had a human purpose, my terror abated. I was now in a state of feverish excitement, wondering what other discoveries would be made. Our way lay along the bank of a little brook. The space was more open. The weeds and bushes had evidently been trampled down, and broken away. Miriam walked more slowly, and looked upon the ground. At last she again paused, and pointed with a rigid, bony finger to a little alder twig, which was trembling in the breeze. I could see nothing there but a dewdrop sparkling in the moonlight; but, obeying the impulse of my will, which was in obedience to Miriam, I stooped to touch the dewdrop, and instead, I took off the twig—a ring! It was the diamond ring, which Miriam had given to Ackermann. I clutched it in my hand, and turned to Miriam, but she was retracing her steps.

I remember nothing of the return home. I saw nothing, felt nothing. I seemed to be sailing through the air, so exhilarated was I. I can compare my state to nothing but that of a person who has been taking ether. I took but little notice of Miriam, until we entered the village, when I observed that she walked more slowly. After a time it seemed to be an effort to her to walk at all, until finally she tottered, and fell close by her own door. I stood an instant, and looked at her. She lay on the step, a stiff and rigid corpse. Her eyes were open, but they were fixed in the glassy stare of death! I ran into the house. Mrs. Grove was in the dining room, sleeping heavily. I was about to awaken her, when I remembered that I would have to account for the strange fact of the body lying at the front door. How could I tell Mrs. Grove, who had showed herself to be a weak and nervous woman, the wonderful story of our night walk? Would she be able to help me if she knew it? I thought of calling upon Miriam's father, but that seemed horrible. These thoughts rushed through my mind with the rapidity of lightning, and I ran out of the door again, not knowing what to do. A man was standing on the step: I suppose he happened to be passing, and stopped in amazement at the sight; but I did not pause to look at him, or ask him any questions. I had no time to give him explanations, for I saw the gray dawn was breaking in the eastern sky, and feared that soon other persons might come along the street. I gave him a confused and hurried account of how we had thought Miriam dead, and how she had walked that far, and fallen; and I begged him to help me carry her in the house. He consented, and then I remembered that there was a side door, which was near Miriam's room, and if we carried the body through that we should avoid waking Mrs. Grove. I passed silently through the dining room, and, having unbolted the door, I returned, and lifted the body of my poor friend in my arms, while the stranger raised her head. And thus we carried her in the house, and laid her on the bed. I smoothed her dishevelled hair, and arranged her torn dress, forgetting that any one else was in the room, until I was startled by a groan. And then for the first time I looked at the stranger. It was Ackermann!

My fingers involuntarily closed tighter around the ring, which, all this time, I had kept shut up in my hand. Not for the world would I have had him to see it then. I was more afraid of him than I had been of Miriam during all our journey. She might be called an Avenging Angel. He was a destroying Fiend.

He trembled violently. He laid his hand heavily upon my arm. It was as cold as ice, and made a chilly horror creep over me.

'Tell me, Hester,' he said, in a hoarse voice, 'what is the meaning of this? You and Miriam have been farther than the front door, or your clothes would not be in this cut and ragged condition. Why do you look at me so strangely—so horribly? Speak to me! Speak!'

I longed to show him the ring, and confront him then with his horrid crimes, but he looked so fiercely I dared not. It is well that I did not. I know not what might have been the result. Justice might have been cheated of her proper prey, and I not have been here to write this tale. I made my escape from the room, and left him with his dead victim.

I have a confused recollection of being surrounded with pale and eager faces, and of telling them my wonderful story, and showing them the ring. And then I remember nothing more for many hours, for I fell into a heavy sleep.

That night, so full of horrors, did not turn my hair white, or make me ill, or cause me to lose my reason. I was subject to a nervous irritability for some time afterward, but that passed away, and the only feeling I have left to remind me of that terrible night is my aversion to sit up with a dead body. I have never done it since.

The route that Miriam and I had followed was carefully traced. Our tracks were not discernible until the graveyard was nearly reached. There they found the print of our shoes in the wet gravel; and in the loose soil around the newly dug grave. On Annie was found a note from Ackermann appointing a meeting with her on that evening when she had so mysteriously disappeared.

Ackermann was arrested and brought to trial. When he learned the nature of the evidence against him it seemed to fill him with a superstitious horror, which drew from him a full confession of his guilt, although, at first, he protested his innocence. He gave in his confession, and met his ignominious death with the same bold front and reckless daring he had manifested during all his life.

It only remains to tell how Ackermann was led to murder a woman he loved—for he certainly loved Annie. It seems that Annie, in her light, trifling way, had seriously wounded him by flirting with one of her former suitors. He remonstrated, but his evident distress only urged the giddy girl to further trials of her power. And she had an object in arousing his jealousy, for she too was jealous of Miriam's ring. He persisted in wearing it, notwithstanding her entreaties, and she feared some lingering affection for the giver gave rise to the reluctance to part with the gift. On the night of the murder, high words had passed between them in regard to it. In the heat of the discussion, Annie had managed dexterously to slip the ring off his finger. He struggled to regain it. She threw it away. The quarrel now grew more violent, until at last, in his rage, and as unconscious of what he was doing as an intoxicated man, he struck the fatal blow, and Annie fell dead at his feet. In the midst of his horror and remorse—for even he was filled with horror at such a deed—he thought of himself, and provided for his safety by hiding the body among the thorny and poisonous bushes, knowing it would be more unlikely to be found there than if he threw it into the river, or dug a grave for it. Creeping carefully in and out among the thick, thorny bushes, so as to disarrange them as little as possible, he first deposited his dead burden, and then returned to the place of the last fatal struggle, that he might look for the lost ring.

The moon had risen, and he could see every object with great distinctness. He looked carefully along the ground, pushing aside the weeds, and removing every stone under which it might have rolled. After a few minutes' search he became conscious that some one else was looking for the ring! He was angry with himself for entertaining such a delusion; but still, in spite of his efforts to get rid of it, the feeling continued. He had a dim and vague idea that something impalpable was near him, now by his side, now before him, never behind him, looking as eagerly and as anxiously as himself for the lost diamonds. He inwardly cursed his own cowardice, for he thought this apparition was born from his guilty conscience, and he determined to pay no heed to it.

At last he approached a cluster of alder bushes, which he now remembered to have been the place where Annie threw away the ring. He was about to commence a search among these, when suddenly Miriam stood between him and the bushes. He saw her distinctly for a moment, and then she vanished from his gaze. He pursued her in the direction she had taken, but no trace of her could he find. Then, recollecting how very ill she was, he became convinced that he had become subject to an optical illusion. But he had now become fearful and nervous, and dared not return to the spot to renew the search. And thus it was that the ring was left upon the twig of alder to bear witness against him.



NAPOLEON'S TOMB.

Written by HON. ROBERT J. WALKER (then a student) in 1821, on hearing of the death of Napoleon.

See where amid the Ocean's surging tide A little island lifts its desert side, Where storms on storms in ceaseless torrents pour, And howling billows lash its rocky shore— There lies Napoleon in his island tomb: Nations combined to antedate his doom. Mars nursed the infant in a thundercloud, France gave him empire, Britain wrought his shroud. Danger and glory claimed him as their own, And Fortune marked him as her favorite son; Science seemed dozing in eternal sleep, And superstition brooded o'er the deep; Black was the midnight of the human soul, Such Gothic darkness shrouds the icy pole: Napoleon bade his conquering legions pour The blaze of battle on from shore to shore: Though blood and havoc marked the victor's way, Blest Science shed her genial ray. Betrayed, not conquered, round the hero's sleep The Arts shall mourn, and Genius vigil keep.



THE DESTINY OF THE AFRICAN RACE IN THE UNITED STATES.

Many persons may be disposed to receive with a large share of scepticism the affirmation that there is an aspect of the 'negro question,' which has not, within the last thirty years of ceaseless agitation, undergone a thorough discussion. Yet such an assertion would be perfectly true. There is one side of that question, at which, during all the fierce excitements of the time, we have scarcely looked; and which many, even those who have taken an active and leading part in the controversy, have not carefully studied.

The morality of our system of slavery has been fully and thoroughly discussed, and may be considered as finally and forever settled, in the judgment of all right-minded and impartial men throughout Christendom. It may henceforth be taken as the consensus omnium gentium, that men and women, with their children and their children's children forever, cannot rightfully be made, by human laws, chattels personal and articles of merchandise.

The economy of slavery has been discussed. Its relations to wealth, to industry, to commerce, manufactures, and the arts, as well as to education, public intelligence, and public morals, are so well understood, that it is not probable that the efforts even of Jefferson Davis, or the whole 'Southern confederacy,' with the aid of such transatlantic allies as the London Times, will be able, in respect to such matters as these, to change or even to unsettle the judgment of mankind.

But there is another class of questions on which the public mind is as unthoughtful and unenlightened, as in respect to these it is thoughtful and intelligent. We have pretty well considered what consequences may be expected from the continuance of slavery; but we have neglected to inquire, on the supposition of the emancipation of the negro, what will be his condition, what his future, and what his influence on our national destiny. Upon such questions as these, we have, during the controversy, dogmatized much, and thought little. They have called forth many outbursts of passion, but very little calm, thoughtful discussion.

There is no lack of earnest and confident opinions in the public mind in relation to this class of questions. It is in respect to this very side of the negro question, that prejudices the most intense and inveterate are widely prevalent; prejudices, too, which have exerted the most decisive influence on the controversy, through every stage of its progress. The masses of the American people believe in those principles of political equality upon which all our constitutions are founded. They not only believe in them, but they cherish and love them. They perceive, too, by a kind of instinct, what many a would-be philosopher has failed to see, that the application and carrying out of those principles necessarily involve the fusion of the entire mass to which they are applied, into one homogeneous whole; that we cannot have a government founded on political equality, consistently with our having an inferior and proscribed class of citizens; a class from whose daughters our sons may not take their wives, and to whose sons we are not willing, either in this or in any future generation, to give our daughters in marriage. Political equality implies that the son of any parents may be raised to the highest offices in the government, and wear the most brilliant honors which a free people can confer. And the masses of the people instinctively see, or rather feel, that it is impossible to admit to such equality a class to whom we deny, and always intend to deny all equality in the social state; and with whom we are shocked at the very thought of ever uniting our race and our blood.

I am not now saying where the moral right of this matter lies; or whether, in this inveterate hostility to a social equality with the negro, the masses of the people are right or wrong. I am only affirming, what certainly cannot be successfully denied, that while they retain and cherish it, they will never be willing to apply to him this doctrine of political equality. They will always resist it, as carrying with it, by inevitable consequence, that social equality to which they are determined never to submit. If the doctrine of political equality, so fundamental, to our system of government, is ever to be extended so as to embrace the colored man, it can only be done by overcoming and utterly obliterating this social aversion.

If it were proved to be ever so desirable to effect such a change in the tastes and prejudices of the American people, history does not lend any countenance to the belief that it is possible. Wherever one people has conquered another, the conquerors and their descendants have always asserted for themselves a political superiority for ages; and that political superiority has extended itself into all the relations of social life. This has taken place with such uniformity, as to impress upon the mind the belief that it occurs in obedience to some great law of human nature, which may be expected to baffle all attempts at resistance in the future, as it has done in the past. The testimony of history is, that equality can be the law of national life only when the nation was originally formed from equal elements. But two peoples never met on the same soil, and under the same government, under conditions so widely unequal as the European and the African populations of this country. The Europeans are, to a great extent, the descendants of the most enlightened men of the world, heirs by birth to the highest civilization of the nineteenth century. The Africans, on the contrary, are the known descendants of parents who were taken by force from their own country, and brought hither as merchandise, sold as chattels and beasts of burden to the highest bidder; and have even now no civilization except what they have acquired in this condition of abject slavery; separated, too, from the dominant class, not only by this stigma of slavery, but by complexion and features so marked and peculiar, that a small taint of the blood of the servile class can be detected with unerring certainty. If history decides anything, it is that a system of political equality cannot be formed out of such elements. The experience of the world is against it.

This deeply seated aversion to the recognition of the equality of the white man and the black man is a potent force, which has been incessantly active in all our history, and furnishes the only satisfactory explanation of the fact that slavery did not perish, at least from all the Northern slave-holding States, long ago. There is, especially in the Border Slave States, a large non-slave-holding class, who know that the existence of slavery is utterly prejudicial to their interests and destructive of their prosperity as free laborers. They are so keenly sensible of this, that they regard with almost equal hatred the system of slavery, the negro, and the slave owner. But one consideration, which is never absent from their minds, always prevails, even over their regard for their own interests, and receives their steady and invariable cooeperation with the slave owner in perpetuating the enslavement of the colored man. That consideration is the dread of negro equality. If, say they, the colored man becomes a freeman, then why not entitled to all the privileges and franchises which other freemen enjoy? And if admitted to political, then surely to social equality also.

And to many it seems perfectly clear that the universal emancipation of the negro carries with it by inevitable necessity his admission to the full enjoyment of all equality, political and social, and his becoming homogeneous with the mass of the American people; and the fact that they think so is the only adequate explanation of the inflexible energy of will with which they resist all measures which are supposed to tend in the smallest degree toward emancipation. And they think themselves able to give unanswerable reasons for the bitterness with which they note everything which is expressed by the word 'abolitionism.' They assume it for a fact, which admits no contradiction, that the natural increase of the negro race in this country is more rapid than that of the white man. So far as my observation extends, the great majority of the people believe this with an undoubting faith. It is constantly asserted in conversation, and in the most exaggerated form in newspaper paragraphs; although (as I shall presently show) a mere glance at our census tables disproves it. It is also assumed, with a faith equally undoubting, that if the slaves were all emancipated, the negro race would still increase as rapidly in freedom as in slavery. Emancipation, it is said, would at once cast upon the country four millions and a half of free negroes; and by the rapidity of their increase, they would, at no distant day, become a majority of the whole population.

If then, it is further argued, you emancipate them, and yet withhold from them a full participation in all our political privileges, they will be hostile to our government, a great nation of aliens in the midst of us, who would be the natural enemies of our institutions. An internecine war of races, it is said, must follow. Even here it would be well for persons who entertain such gloomy apprehensions, to remember that if these assumptions were all true (though I will show in the sequel that they are not), even then, emancipation could not make of the negroes more dangerous enemies to our institutions than slavery has made of the masters. It is also said that the only possible mode of escaping all these horrible results, would be to admit the negro, if he must be freed, to all the privileges and franchises of the Constitution, and amalgamate him entirely with the mass of American society. Thus it is taken for proved that emancipation would carry with it the equality of the negro and the white man in all their relations.

I believe it to be true beyond reasonable doubt, that the great majority of the American people do at this time accept this substantially as their creed on the question of emancipation. They do not mean to justify slavery; they abhor and hate it; they regard it as economically, socially, politically, and morally wrong. But they regard emancipation as tending directly and inevitably to incorporate the negro into the mass of American society, and compel us to treat him as homogeneous with it. To such a solution of the question they feel an unconquerable aversion. It shocks their taste; it violates their notions of propriety and fitness; they resist it by a sort of instinct, rather than from set conviction and purpose.

Nor is there one man in a thousand of us, who is not conscious in himself of a certain degree of sympathy with this view of the subject, however much we may think that we morally disapprove it. With enslaving the negro, and reducing him to an article of merchandise, or depriving him of one of those moral rights which God has given him as a man, we have no sympathy. But if, in full view of a proposition to break down all the social barriers which now divide the races, so that our descendants and those of the colored man shall form one homogeneous people, we interrogate our own consciousness, we shall discover that we, even those of us who have most eloquently and indignantly denounced 'prejudice against color,' are compelled to own ourselves in sympathy with the great mass of the American people, in utter and unconquerable aversion to such an arrangement.

It is probable that this article may fall into the hands of some friends of mine whose judgment I greatly respect, and whose feelings I should be most reluctant to wound, to whom these sentiments will at first view be far from agreeable. But for many years I have entertained them with undoubting confidence of their truth; and at this solemn crisis of our nation's destiny it becomes us to lay aside all our prejudices, and to endeavor to reach the truth on this momentous question. I repeat it: this side of the subject has not been fairly met and considered in this discussion. The time has come when we must meet it. Emancipation is an indispensable condition of the restoration and perpetuity of the Union, perhaps even of our continued national existence. The one great objection to emancipation, in the minds of the people, North and South, is the belief, so confidently and even obstinately entertained, that it carries with it as an inevitable consequence, either an internecine war of races, which would destroy us, or the amalgamation of our race and blood with that of the negro. If we mean, as practical men and statesmen, to seek our country's salvation by means of emancipation, we must, in some way, relieve the national mind from the pressure of this objection. Till we do so, the masses of the people will say to us: 'We do not approve of slavery; we abhor it; but if we are to have the negro among us, we believe in keeping him in slavery.' All of us, who are in the habit of talking with the people on this subject, know that almost in these very words we are met at every street corner. We must answer it, or in some form slavery will still continue to be the curse of our country, and to hurry it on to an untimely and ignominious end.

Let it be distinctly borne in mind that it is not the moral equality of the negro to the white man, which is under consideration. That indeed is only indirectly assailed by the inveterate national prejudice of which I speak. Those masses of the people who have no pecuniary interest in slavery, trample on the moral rights of the colored man only because they are made to believe themselves placed under the hard necessity of doing so, in order to resist any approach toward that political and social equality with him to which they are determined never to submit. Show them how they can concede to him the former without conceding the latter, and they will gladly do it. For myself, nothing can be added to the intensity of my conviction not only that the colored man must be protected in the full enjoyment of all the moral rights of humanity, as a condition of our prolonged national existence; but that the masses of the people never will consent to a political and social equality with the negro race.

How then can the public mind be assured that to emancipate the enslaved race, to confer on them all the moral rights of humanity, does not involve by any necessity or even remote probability, either an internecine war of races on our own soil, or the fusion of the two races into one homogeneous people? One answer, which satisfies many, is, the freedmen must be colonized in some unoccupied region of the earth, where they may be separated from the white man, and build up for themselves an independent and homogeneous nationality. I have no controversy with this proposed solution of the difficulty, or with the excellent men who are advocating and promoting it, with an earnest patriotism worthy of all honor. But I have grave doubts of the adequacy of this solution to meet the momentous exigencies of the present crisis. At least, I feel no necessity of resting the whole cause upon it, when there is another solution at hand, which certainly is adequate, furnished by the very laws of nature which the Creator has established, and so certain in its operation, that we have only to strike the fetters from the limbs of the poor slave, and recognize his manhood, and God will take care of the rest, and protect our country from the evils we have so much dreaded.

That solution is found in a great law of population. It is necessary, therefore, that I should state this law, and prove its reality, and its adequacy to meet all the necessities of the case in hand.

Whenever two peoples, one of which is little removed from barbarism, and the other having the full strength of a mature civilization, are placed in juxtaposition with each other, on terms of free labor and free competition, the stronger will always either amalgamate itself with the weaker, or extinguish it. In the former case, civilization undergoes an eclipse, almost an extinction. The homogeneous people resulting from such a union, occupies a position in the scale of civilization much nearer to that of their barbarous than that of their civilized parents. Numerous and conclusive examples of this have occurred in the progress of the French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in proximity to the various native tribes of this continent. They have generally amalgamated freely with their savage neighbors; and a deep eclipse of civilization has in every instance resulted. When that eclipse is to end, we have not the foresight to determine.

The English colonies, on the other hand, in all parts of the world, have steadily refused to enter into any marriage relations with their barbarous neighbors, or to recognize as belonging to their community any half-breeds springing from licentious and illicit connection with them. Here, too, the results are almost entirely uniform. The extinction of such barbarous tribes brought within the sphere of their competition has been rapid and almost if not absolutely invariable; while the English colonies themselves have preserved the civilization of the parent stock in almost undiminished vigor.

A mere general view of the history of European colonization in barbarous regions of the earth, does therefore afford a very striking proof of the truth of my proposition. And it is much to our purpose here to remark, that the very aversion to incorporating the negro into our nationality, which is so firmly fixed in the minds of the masses of the people, is no new thing in our history, and no outgrowth of slavery. It is the same national characteristic which, in all parts of the world, has prevented the English colonist from intermarrying with his barbarous neighbor. Call it by what hard name you please, call it 'prejudice against color,' and denounce it as eloquently and indignantly as you may, it is one of the most remarkable and one of the most respectable features of the English colonies wherever found, and one of the chief causes of their preeminence over those of other European nations, in civilization, wealth, and power. But what it is chiefly to our purpose to remark is, that while it is to the colonies themselves the cause of unequalled prosperity and rapidity of growth in all the elements of national greatness, to their savage neighbors it is the cause of rapid and certain extinction.

Precisely in such relations to each other will the white and colored populations of the United States be placed by an act of universal emancipation, the substitution of free labor and free competition for the compulsory power of the master. And while on the one hand the history of the colonial off-shoots of England shows that the amalgamation of the races will not follow, it shows with equal clearness and certainty that the rapid extinction of the colored race will follow. Here I might rest the whole argument, with a high degree of assurance of the soundness and certainty of my conclusion, that the result of emancipation must be, not the amalgamation of the races, not an internecine war between them, but the inevitable extinction of the weaker race by the competition of the stronger. I say the competition of the stronger, because, to avoid extending this article to a very unreasonable length, I must assume that the reader is sufficiently versed in American history to know that even the Indian perishes, for the most part, not by the sword or the rifle of the white man, but by the simple competition of civilization with the Indian's means of subsistence.

I might, I say, leave my argument here; but to do so would be great injustice to the subject. There are abundant and unquestionable facts, which show to a demonstration, that the case of the negro in his relations to the European population of this country is embraced in the law just stated.

In the first place, the two races are not amalgamated. Intermarriages between them are so rare, that few of the readers of this article can remember ever to have known one. Such marriages are regarded as monstrous and disgraceful, though the law should, as in some of the States, recognize them. One sentiment in respect to them pervades the whole community, and that a sentiment of aversion. Those half-breeds which spring from licentiousness, or even from the very few lawful marriages which have occurred, are not accepted as standing in any nearer relations to the white man than the pure-blooded African. In those States where slavery has been longest extinct, and the colored man has been relieved from all legal disabilities, the line between the two races is as sharply drawn to-day as it was two hundred years ago. On such a question two hundred years and more is long enough for an experiment. The experiment already tried does prove that the Anglo-American and African populations of this country cannot be amalgamated, either by freedom or slavery; and those who pretend to fear it, are either trying to deceive others for selfish and criminal purposes, or else they are wofully deceived themselves.

Nor are the apprehensions of those who dread the rapid increase of the negro, at all sustained by facts. That fear of a coming internecine war of races, in case the colored man is emancipated, which haunts some minds, has no foundation except in ignorance of the real facts. In no portion of our history has our colored population ever increased with a rapidity nearly so great as the white population. From 1790 to 1860 the colored population increased in the ratio of 1 to 5.86; and the white population in the ratio of 1 to 8.50. If we compare them for any shorter period, we shall always find that the white population increased the more rapidly of the two. From 1790 to 1808, we might perhaps expect to find it otherwise; for during that period the slave trade was in full activity, and tens of thousands of Africans were imported as articles of merchandise. But from 1790 to 1810, while the colored population increased in the ratio of 1 to 1.81, the white population increased in the ratio of 1 to 1.84, although during that period the white population of the country was very little increased by immigration. How it has happened that this point, which our tables of population make so entirely plain, has been so much misapprehended, and why the prevailing notions respecting it are so erroneous, is not easy to explain. The above estimate also reckons all half breeds as belonging to the colored population. (See De Bow's 'Compendium of the United States Census of 1850,' Tables 18, 42, and 71.)

But this is not all. A careful examination of Tables 42 and 71 of the volume above referred to, will show that the increase of the colored race in freedom is certainly not half so great as in slavery. Indeed there is great reason to doubt whether our colored population has ever increased at all, except in slavery. From 1790 to 1800 the free colored population almost doubled, evidently by the emancipation of slaves; for during that period the slave population of Connecticut, Delaware, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont was greatly diminished, while that of New Jersey and Maryland was very little increased. In the last mentioned the increase of her slave population was only 21/2 per cent. in ten years, while the increase of her free colored population was 1431/2 per cent. in the same period. These figures leave no room for doubt that the rapid increase of the free colored population in all that decade was caused by the fact that the great mass of the people were honestly opposed to slavery, and therefore the work of emancipation went on with rapidity.

From 1800 to 1810 the increase of the free colored population was 72 per cent., under the continued though somewhat slackened operation of the same cause. From 1810 to 1820 the increase had declined from 72 to 25 per cent.; for the very obvious reason that most of the Northern States had now no slaves to emancipate, while the Southern States were holding to the system of slavery with increased tenacity, and emancipation was becoming less frequent. From 1820 to 1830 the ratio of increase was again raised to 37 per cent. in ten years. By referring again to Table 71, it will be seen that in that decade, New York and New Jersey emancipated more than 15,000 slaves, adding them to the free colored population. From 1830 to 1840 the rate of increase declined to 21 per cent., and from 1840 to 1850 to only 121/4 per cent., and to 10 per cent. from 1850 to 1860.

These figures prove that from 1790 to 1840 the increase of the free colored population depended chiefly on the emancipation of slaves, and leave no reason to believe that its own natural increase ever exceeded 121/4 per cent. in ten years; while the average increase of the slave population is nearly 28 per cent. in ten years, and of the white population 34 per cent. in ten years. Thus, beyond controversy, the reproductive power of the colored population, always greatly inferior to that of the white population, is yet not half so great in freedom as in slavery. This difference is to be accounted for in great measure by the wicked and beastly stimulus applied to the increase of slaves, that the chattel market may be kept supplied.

There is no reason to suppose that the increase of the free colored population would be in a greater ratio if all were emancipated; but, as will appear from considerations yet to be presented, much for supposing that it would be in a much smaller ratio. How then would the case stand on that supposition? In 1860 there were about 27,000,000 of our white population, increasing at the rate of 34 per cent. in ten years; and less than 4,500,000 of colored population, increasing (on the supposition of universal freedom) in a ratio not exceeding 121/4 per cent. in ten years. Surely, that must be a very timid man who, in this relation of the parties, fears anything from the increase of free negroes. A war between these two races, so related to each other, is simply absurd, and the fear of it childish and cowardly. Slavery may multiply the colored population till its numbers shall become alarming; but if we will give freedom to the black man, we have nothing to fear from his increase.

But this certainly is not the full strength of the case. There is no good reason to believe that the natural increase of the free colored population is even 121/4 per cent. in ten years, but much for suspecting that even this apparent increase is the result of emancipation, either by the slave's own act, or by the consent of the master. If we take our departure from Chicago, make the tour of the lakes to the point where the boundary line of New York and Pennsylvania intersects the shore of Lake Erie, thence pass along the southern boundary of New York, till it intersects the Hudson river, thence along that river and the Atlantic coast to the southern boundary of Virginia, thence along the southern boundaries of Virginia and Kentucky to the Mississippi, thence along that river to the point where the northern boundary of Illinois intersects it, and thence along that boundary and the shore of Lake Michigan to the place of departure, we shall have embraced within the line described ten of the thirty-four States of the Union. By an examination of Table 42, already referred to, it will be seen that outside of those ten States the free colored population not only did not increase between 1840 and 1850, but actually diminished, and that all the increase of that decade was in those ten States.

Why then was there an increase in those ten States, while in the other twenty-four there was an actual decrease? I think this question can only be answered by ascribing that increase to emancipation. In Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, slavery is unprofitable and declining, and acts of emancipation frequently occur. Pennsylvania and New Jersey, before the passage of the fugitive slave law of 1850, were favorite resorts of fugitives, perhaps partly on account of the known sympathies of the Quakers. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, were also resorted to by fugitives, both on account of their easy accessibility from adjacent Slave States, and their proximity to Canada, and also because such labor as a fugitive from slavery is best able to do, is there always in demand. These States have also received thousands of colored persons, brought to them by humane and conscientious masters, for the very purpose of emancipating them.

From 1850 to 1860 the facts are still more striking. The increase which occurred was not, as would have been true of a natural increase, scattered over our whole territory, and in some proportion to the colored population previously existing, but almost wholly, either where the unprofitableness and decline of slavery was leading to emancipation, or where from any cause the fugitive slave law of 1850 was not strictly enforced. Examples of the former are Maryland, Virginia, and Missouri, and of the latter are Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and even Massachusetts and Connecticut, in the latter of which it had been declining for twenty years previous.

With the facts before us, then, furnished by the United States Census, from 1790 to 1860, how is it possible to believe that the colored population of this country has ever increased at all, except hi slavery? How can we help seeing that it is slavery, and slavery alone, which has swelled their numbers from a little more than half a million, as it was in 1790, to near four and a half millions at the present time? Yet there are millions among us that turn pale at the thought of emancipation, lest thereby we should be overrun by the multiplication of the colored race! There are millions who would be thought intelligent men, who think they have propounded an unanswerable argument against emancipation When they have asked, 'What will you do with the negro?' We may well ask what shall we do with the negro, if we continue to multiply the race in slavery as beasts of burden and articles of merchandise. But on the supposition of freedom, the question has no significance. The men who are always scaring themselves and others by such fears are either very ignorant or very hypocritical.

But the case will be still stronger when we come to inquire, as we must before we close, into the causes of the facts which have just been presented. There is no reason to believe that the slower increase of the colored race is at all due to any original inferiority in the powers of reproduction, or that any such inferiority exists. Its causes are to be found wholly in the different circumstances, characters, and habits of the two peoples. The negro is, to a great extent, a barbarian in the midst of civilization. He is destitute of those comforts of life, that care, skill, and intelligent watchfulness, which are indispensable to success in rearing children in the midst of the dangers, exposures, and diseases of infancy. His dwelling does not afford the necessary protection from the cold and storms of winter, or from the heats of summer: it is ill warmed and ill ventilated; he has not an unfailing supply of food and clothing suited to the wants of that most frail and delicate of living creatures, a human infant. Hence a large portion of his children die in infancy.

On the last page of the Appendix to the volume already referred to, is a most instructive table, showing the truth of this operation. Thus in 1850 the white population of Alabama was 426,514; the colored population, slave and free, was 365,109. In that year the deaths of white children under five years of age were 1,650; of colored children, 2,463. That is, only two thirds as many white children died as colored; and yet the white population was greater almost in the ratio of 7 to 6. By running the eye down the table, it will be seen that similar facts exist in every State where there is a large colored population. These facts leave us in no doubt as to the reason why the increase of the colored population is always slower than that of the white population.

This occurs, as the table just referred to shows, under slavery, where the pecuniary interest of the master will secure his watchful cooeperation with the parent to preserve the life of the infant. But in freedom the same causes act upon the colored race with vastly more destructive effect. The preservation of infant life and health is then left solely to the care, skill, and resources of the parent. The result is that decay of the colored race which we have seen indicated in the census. It is essential to our purpose that this point should be made quite plain.

It is obvious that there is in every community a lower stratum of population, in which wages are sufficient to support the individual laborer in comfort, but not sufficient for the support of a family. This not only always has been so, but it always must be, as long as competition continues to be the test of value; and competition must continue to be the test of value as long as the individual right of property is protected and preserved. Nor is this, as many superficial thinkers of our day have thought it, merely the hard and selfish rule by which Shylock oppresses and grinds the face of his victim: it is a necessary and beneficent law of the best forms of society which can ever exist in this world. The welfare of society in all the future imperatively requires that it should be propagated from the strong, the sound, the healthy, both in body and mind, from the strongest, most vigorous, and noblest specimens of the race; and not from the diseased, the weak, the vicious, the degraded, the broken-down classes. Thus only can the life and health of society be preserved age after age. This is as necessary as it is that the farmer should propagate his domestic animals from the finest of his stock, and not from the diminutive, the weak, and the sickly. And it is accomplished in well ordered society by that very law of wages just stated. As a general rule, it is the very persons who are unfit to be the parents of the coming generation, that are thrown into that lower stratum where wages are insufficient for the support of a family. And just in proportion as the entire structure of society is pervaded by intelligence and virtue, this class of persons will abstain from marriage, by prudently considering that they have not a satisfactory prospect of being able to support a family. It is thus only that the horrors of extreme poverty can be avoided at the bottom of the social pyramid. The severity of this law of wages and population can thus be greatly mitigated and the comforts of life be universally enjoyed; but the law itself is necessary and beneficent, and never can be repealed till human nature and human society are constructed on other principles than those known to us.

To apply this to the question before us: When by the act of emancipation the negro is made a free laborer, he is brought into direct competition with the white man; that competition he is unable to endure; and he soon finds his place in that lower stratum, which has just been spoken of, where he can support himself in tolerable comfort as a hired servant, but cannot support a family. The consequence is inevitable. He will either never marry, or he will, in the attempt to support a family, struggle in vain against the laws of nature, and his children will, many of them at least, die in infancy. It is not necessary to argue to convince a candid man (and for candid men only is this article written) that this is, as a general rule, the condition of the free negro. And it shows, beyond the possibility of mistake, what in this country his destiny must be. Like his brother, the Indian of the forest, he must melt away and disappear forever from the midst of us. I do not affirm or intimate that this must be his destiny in all countries. In the tropical regions of the earth, where he may have little to fear from the competition of the more civilized white man, he may preserve and multiply his race. Let him try the experiment. It is worth trying.

Far be it from me to intimate that the negro is the only class of our population that are in this sad condition. In our large cities and towns there are hundreds of thousands of men who have no drop of African blood in their veins, and who are more clamorous than any other class against negro equality, who, through ignorance or vice, or superstition, or inevitable calamity, are in the same hard lot; their children, if they have any, perish in great numbers in infancy, and they will add nothing to the future population of our country. That will be derived from a stronger, nobler parentage. Their race will become extinct. Their case differs from that of the colored man only in this, that they are not distinguished by color and features from the rest of the population; so that the decay of their race cannot be traced by the eye and the memory, and expressed in statistical tables.

We are now prepared to see why the colored population has been, for a considerable time, declining in New York and New England. In those States population is dense; all occupations which afford a comfortable living for a family are crowded and the competition of the white man is quite too much for the negro. If emancipation were now to be made universal, the same thing would rapidly occur in all parts of our country. The white laborer would rush in and speedily crowd every avenue to prosperity and wealth; and the negro, with his inferior civilization, would be crowded everywhere into the lower stratum of the social pyramid, and in a few generations be seen no more. The far more rapid increase of the white race would render the competition more and more severe to him with each successive generation, and render his decay more rapid, and his extinction more certain.

I am well aware that this article may fall into the hands of many excellent men who will not relish this argument, nor this conclusion. They will say it were better then to keep the poor negro in slavery. But they would not say so if they would consider the whole case. If slavery were a blessing to the black man, it is so great a curse to the white man that it should never be permitted to exist. The white man can afford to be kind to the negro in freedom; but he cannot afford to curse himself with being his master and owning him as his property. On this point I need not enlarge, for I am devoutly thankful that the literature of Christendom is full of it.

But slavery is not a blessing to the negro, even in the view of his condition which I have presented; it is an unmitigated curse. To a man of governed passions and virtuous life, it is infinitely better to be an unmarried freeman, enjoying the comforts of this life, and the hopes of the life to come, than to live and die a slave, and the parent of an interminable posterity of slaves. To a being of vicious life and ungoverned passions, all life is a curse, whether in slavery or freedom; and it surely is not obligatory on us, or beneficial to the colored man, to preserve the system of slavery for the sake of perpetuating a succession of such lives down through coming generations.

Slavery, by forced and artificial means, propagates society from its lowest and most degraded class, from a race of barbarians held within its bosom from generation to generation, without being permitted to share its civilizing influences. It thus propagates barbarism from age to age, till at last it involves both master and slave in a common ruin. Freedom recruits the ranks of a nation's population from the homes of the industrious, the frugal, the strong, the enlightened, the virtuous, the religious; and leaves the ignorant, the superstitious, the indolent, the improvident, the vicious, without an offspring, and without a name in future generations. Freedom places society, by obeying the law of propagation which God imposed on it, upon an ascending plane of ever-increasing civilization; slavery, by a forced and unnatural law of propagation, places it upon a descending plane of ever-deepening vice and barbarism.

That dread of negro equality which is perpetually haunting the imaginations of the American people, is, therefore, wholly without foundation in any reality. It is a delusion, which has already driven us, in a sort of madness, far on the road to ruin. It is, I fear, a judicial blindness, which the all-wise and righteous Ruler of the universe has sent upon us for the punishment of our sins. The negro does not aspire to political or social equality with the white man. He has evidently no such destiny, no such hope, no such possibility. He is weak, and constantly becoming weaker; and nothing can ever make him strong but our continued injustice and oppression. He appeals not to our fears, but to our compassion. He asks not to rule us: he only craves of us leave to toil; to hew our wood and draw our water, for such miserable pittance of compensation as the competition of free labor will award him—a grave. If we deny him this humble boon, we may expect no end to our national convulsions but in dissolution. If we promptly grant it, over all our national domain, we may expect the speedy return of peace, and such prosperity as no nation ever before enjoyed.



WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?

'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Every one lives it—to not many is it known; and seize it where you will, it is interesting.'—GOETHE.

SUCCESSFUL.—Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or intended.'—WEBSTER'S Dictionary.

CHAPTER IV.

We go tack to look a little at the fortunes of the Meeker family. Twenty-three years have passed since we introduced it to the reader, on the occasion of Hiram's birth. Time has produced his usual tokens. Mr. Meeker is already an old man of seventy, but by no means infirm. His days have been cheerful and serene, and his countenance exhibits that contented expression which a happy old age produces.

A happy old age—how few of the few who reach the period enjoy that! Mr. Meeker's life has been unselfish and genuine; already he reaps his reward.

Mrs. Meeker, too, is twenty-three years older than when we first made her acquaintance. She is now over sixty. She still possesses her fair proportions; indeed, she has grown somewhat stouter with advancing years. Her face is sleek and comely, but the expression has not improved. When she wishes to appear amiable, she greets you with the same pleasing smile as ever; but if you watch her features as they relapse into their natural repose, you will discover a discontented, dissatisfied air, which has become habitual. Why? Mrs. Meeker has met with no reverses or serious disappointments in the daily routine of her life. But, alas! its sum total presents no satisfactory consequences. She has become, though unconscious of it, weary of the changeless formality of her religious duties, performed as a ceaseless task, without any real spirit or true devotion. Year after year has run its course and carried her along, through early womanhood into mature life, on to the confines of age. What has she for all those years? Nothing but disquiet and solicitude, and a vague anxiety, without apparent cause or satisfactory object.

As they advance in age, Mr. and Mrs. Meeker exhibit less sympathy in each other's thoughts and views and feelings. By degrees and instinctively the gulf widens between them—until it becomes impassable. Everything goes on quietly and decorously, but there is no sense of united destiny, no pleasurable desire for a union beyond the grave.

The children are scattered; the daughters are all married. Jane and Laura have gone 'West,' and Mary is living in Hartford. Doctor Frank we will give an account of presently. George is a practical engineer, and is employed on the Erie canal. William, who was to remain at home and manage the farm, is married, and lives in a small house not far off. His mother would permit no 'daughter-in-law' with her. She did not like the match. William had fallen in love with a very superior girl, fine-looking and amiable, but not possessed of a penny. Besides, she belonged to the Methodist church, a set who believed in falling from grace! Mrs. Meeker had peremptorily forbid her son marrying 'the girl,' but after a year's delay, and considerable private conversation with his father, William had married her, and a small house which stood on the premises had been put in order for him. What was worse, William soon joined the same church with his wife, and then the happiness of the young couple seemed complete. Mrs. Meeker undertook, as she said, to 'make the best of a bad bargain,' so the two families were on terms of friendly intercourse, but they continued to remain separated.

Dr. Frank, as he was called, had taken his medical degree, and, by the indulgence of his father, whose heart yearned sympathetically toward his firstborn, opportunity was afforded him to spend a year in Paris. Mrs. Meeker groaned over this unnecessary expense. When she saw that on this occasion she was not to have her own way, she insisted that the money her husband was wasting on Frank should be charged against his 'portion.' She never for a moment forgot Hiram's interest. She had schemed for years so to arrange affairs that the homestead proper would fall to him, notwithstanding George was to be the farmer. Mrs. Meeker calculated on surviving her husband for a long, indefinite period. She was several years younger, and, as she was accustomed to remark, came of a long-lived race. 'Mr. Meeker was failing fast' (she had said so for the last fifteen years)—'at his age he could not be expected to hold out long. He ought to make his will, and do justice to Hiram, poor boy. All the rest had received more than their share. He was treated like an outcast.'

This was the burden of Mrs. Meeker's thoughts, the latter portion of which found expression in strong and forcible language. For she calculated, by the aid of her 'thirds' as widow, to so arrange it as to give her favorite the most valuable part of the real estate.

There was a fixedness and a tenacity about this woman's regard for her youngest child that was, in a certain sense, very touching. It could not be termed parental affection—that is blind and indiscriminating; it was rather a sympathetic feeling toward a younger second self, with which, doubtless, was mingled the maternal interest. Whatever touched Hiram affected her; she understood his plans without his explaining them; she foresaw his career; she was anxious, hopeful, trembling, rejoicing, as she thought of what he must pass through before he emerged rich and powerful.