The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and Selected Essays

r what a man will not do to please a woman is yet to be discovered. Nevertheless, it might be well to state a few

moved by compassion for the sufferings of a certain bondman who happened to have a "hard master," essayed to help the slave to freedom. The attempt was discovered and frustrated; the abductor was tried and convicted for slave-stealing, and sentenced to a t

ce to the Enemy of Mankind. When asked why he never did anything serious, Dick would good-naturedly reply, with a well-modulated drawl, that he did n't have to. His father was rich; there was but one other child, an unmarried daughter, who because of poor health would probably never marry, and Dick was

nd of horses, as was befitting a Kentuckian, "is the whip of necessity, or the sp

-five, was a mere suggestion from Charity Lomax. The story was never really known to but two persons until afte

gone to call on Charity Lomax, and, while they sat on the veranda after sundown, had told her all about the tria

him for support and comfort in their declining years. He had been led into the matter by pity for a negro whose master ought to have been run out of the county long ago for abusing his slaves. If it had been merely a question

listened with l

cruel deed it makes the Quaker blood that came from my grandmother assert itself. Personally I wish that all Sam Briggs's negroes would run away. A

, Charity, if I di

for any use. You 'll never do anything h

ou for a year, and it 's the hardest work imagin

, but she drew it ba

ntil you have done something. When t

t want to wait. One must read two years to become a lawyer, and w

quire a lifetime for a man to prove that he is a

h as any other man. What do you want

do, so you do something. Really, come to think of it

, Charity," rejoined Dick humbly, "for

nting slightly, "to see a really clever

has sharpened my wits already. I have an idea!

arity scornfully. "You m

ve, indeed, while your

he old man's; we 've got too many anyway. It may not be quite as difficult as the other m

'm going away for three weeks, to visit my aunt in Tennessee. If you 're able to tell me, when I retu