defending the late lamented system of slavery'?"

"What do you mean, Fulkerson?" asked March, with a puzzled smile.

Fulkerson braced his knees against his desk, and pushed himself back, but
kept his balance to the eye by canting his hat sharply forward." There's
an old cock over there at the widow's that's written a book to prove that
slavery was and is the only solution of the labor problem. He's a
Southerner."

"I should imagine," March assented.

"He's got it on the brain that if the South could have been let alone by
the commercial spirit and the pseudophilanthropy of the North, it would
have worked out slavery into a perfectly ideal condition for the laborer,
in which he would have been insured against want, and protected in all
his personal rights by the state. He read the introduction to me last
night. I didn't catch on to all the points--his daughter's an awfully
pretty girl, and I was carrying that fact in my mind all the time, too,
you know--but that's about the gist of it."

"Seems to regard it as a lost opportunity?" said March.

"Exactly! What a mighty catchy title, Neigh? Look well on the title-
page."

"Well written?"

"I reckon so; I don't know. The Colonel read it mighty eloquently."