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THE ANGEL OF THE LORD

When I was twenty-four I lived at the small capital of my native
Southern State.

My parental home was three counties distant. My father, a slaveholding
planter, was a noble gentleman, whom I loved as he loved me. But we
could not endure each other's politics and I was trying to exist on my
professional fees, in the law office of one of our ex-governors. I was
kindly tolerated by everybody about me but had neglected social
relations, being a black sheep on every hot question of the time--1860.

In the world's largest matters my Southern mother had the sanest
judgment I ever knew, and it was from her I had absorbed my notions on
slavery. It was at least as much in sympathy for the white man as for
the black that she deprecated it, yet she pointed out to me how idle it
was to fancy that any mere manumission of our slaves would cure us of a
whole philosophy of wealth, society, and government as inbred as it was
antiquated.

One evening my two fellow boarders--state-house clerks, good boys--so
glaringly left me out of their plan for a whole day's fishing on the
morrow, that I smarted. I was so short of money that I could not have
supplied my own tackle, but no one knew that, and it stung me to be