pretty good ones when he's somebody else."

Miss Woodburn began, "Oh, mah-" and then stopped herself. Alma's mother
looked at her with distressed question, but the girl seemed perfectly
cool and contented; and she gave her mind provisionally to a point
suggested by Colonel Woodburn's talk.

"Still, I can't believe it was right to hold people in slavery, to whip
them and sell them. It never did seem right to me," she added, in
apology for her extreme sentiments to the gentleness of her adversary.

"I quite agree with you, madam," said the Colonel. "Those were the
abuses of the institution. But if we had not been vitiated on the one
hand and threatened on the other by the spirit of commercialism from the
North--and from Europe, too--those abuses could have been eliminated,
and the institution developed in the direction of the mild patriarchalism
of the divine intention." The Colonel hitched his chair, which figured a
hobby careering upon its hind legs, a little toward Mrs. Leighton and the
girls approached their heads and began to whisper; they fell
deferentially silent when the Colonel paused in his argument, and went on
again when he went on.

At last they heard Mrs. Leighton saying, "And have you heard from the
publishers about your book yet?"

Then Miss Woodburn cut in, before her father could answer: "The coase of
commercialism is on that, too. They are trahing to fahnd oat whethah it
will pay."

"And they are right-quite right," said the Colonel. "There is no longer