"Why, Josiah," said Anna, "I have always heard that there was more
prejudice against the colored people in the North than in the South.
There is a difference in the manifestations of this feeling, but I do
not think there is as much prejudice here as there. [Here?] we have a
prejudice which is [formed from?] traditional ideas. We see in many
parts of the North a very few of the colored people, and our impressions
of them have received their coloring more or less from what the
slaveholders have said of them."

"We have been taught that they are idle, improvident, and unfitted for
freedom, and incapable of progression; and when we see them in the
cities we see them overshadowed by wealth, enterprise, and activity, so
that our unfavorable impressions are too often confirmed. Still if one
of that class rises above this low mental condition, we know that there
are many who are willing to give such a one a healthy recognition."

"I know that there are those that have great obstacles to overcome, but
I think that while Southerners may have more personal likings for
certain favorite servants, they have stronger prejudices than even we
have, or if they have no more than we have, they have more
self-restraint, and show it more virulently."

"But I [think?] they do not seem to have any horror of personal
contact."

"Of course not; constant familiarity with the race has worn away all
sense of physical repulsion but there is a prejudice which ought to be
an American feeling; it is a prejudice against their rising in the scale
of humanity. A prejudice which virtually says you are down, and I mean