Anxiously and intensely we gazed on, but we were disappointed! The
picture was dark, _to be sure_; but we failed to observe all that we
expected! We then called for glasses that magnified a thousand fold,
and again, and again, we surveyed the dark picture! Ah! we saw
something at last! What was it? Well, we either saw something, or,
otherwise, we thought we saw something. Chagrin and despair seized
upon us, and we exclaimed in the bitter agonies of our souls,
"merciful God, are we sinners above all sinners--are there none, so
vile as we are?" "But stop--hold on," (said we), "we are not done with
negrodom yet--we cannot let those rascally slaveholders off so
lightly--we will yet make it appear, that they are more wicked than
ourselves--or, at all events, we will not give them up yet." It was
but seldom that we troubled the good old Bible, but as we were in a
difficulty, we decided at once to consult her--perchance she might
talk about right on the subject of slavery. After a long search we
found the old book; brushed off the dust and opened it. Well, now, we
felt quite certain, that the Bible would tell us, that we were better
Christians than slaveholders; for we had already succeeded in
persuading ourselves, that we were not quite so bad as we imagined at
the outset; and we moreover thought, that we got a glimpse of some
thing dreadful about these Southern folks, but hardly knew what it
was. We then proceeded to examine the Bible. "Where is it," (said we),
"that the Bible denounces these slaveholders, as the chief of
sinners?" "Well, we don't know, but we think it says something
dreadful about them; but we don't know where it is, or what it is."
We searched, but searched in vain; almost ready to abuse the good
Boob, because it refused to abuse slaveholders. We then soliloquized
in the following words. "We don't like these slaveholders--never
did--nor did our fathers before us. Our fathers told us that they were
bad men--that they were guilty of many horrible things; and that they