"Politely, gentlemen," said a feminine voice; "I don't know that I have the nerve for it. My occupation has been marrying them. It is true that the hue-and-cry has made that branch dull, but I had great talent for it."

"Kidnapping," said a third voice, "is running low. It surrounds the whole slave belt from Illinois to Delaware. The laws of Illinois were made in our interests till Governor Harrison, whose free man was kidnapped, raised an excitement out there six years ago. Newt Wright, Joe O'Neal, and Abe Thomas were the smartest kidnappers along the Kentucky line. But Joe Johnson, who is getting ready to go south, will be the last man of enterprise in the business. John A. Murrell's idea is to divide fair with black men, sell and steal them back, and I think it is sagacious. It's safer, any way, than Patty Cannon's other plan."

"What is that, Mr. Ogg?" said the feminine-voiced negro.

"Making away with the negro-traders, they say."

"See me! see me!" exclaimed the first voice. "Dey'll hang her some day fur dat."

"Now," resumed Mr. Ogg, "a man of intelligence like you and me, Mr. Ransom - pardon, sir, does your shackle incommode you? I'll stuff it with some wool"

"Politely, Mr. Ogg; I'm ironed rather too tight."

"I say, Mr. Ransom, you and I can always play the average slaveholder for a fool. Why, I hardly get into any family before I make love to some member of it, and if I don't vamose with a black wench, it's with her mistress."

"Ah, Mr. Ogg, they are perfectly fiendish in resenting that!"

"Of course, but there's a grand tit-for-tat going through all nature. Why, sir, the pleasures of the far South, to a man of art and enterprise like you, far exceed this poor, plain region. Take the roof off slavery and the blacks have rather the best of it; the whites would think so if they could see what is going on."

"Politely, Mr. Ogg; will not the entire institution some day blow itself out, like one of their Western steamboats?"

"No doubt of it, Mr. Ransom. When we have disposed of you, and you can see the country for yourself, observe how sensitive slaveholding is! A thousand anxieties lie in it. They believe in insurrections, rapes, and incendiaries. A perfect sleep they hardly know, but go prowling around night and day, driven by their suspicions. It makes them warlike, yet unhappy, and the slaves eat the ground poor. Besides, they have terrible enemies in the negro-traders, whom they look down on socially, and really drive them into sympathy with the negroes. Mr. Murrell, for instance, has a grand plan for a slave insurrection. He says white society is all against him, and he'll get even with it."

"See me, see me!" hoarsely chimed in another voice. "Slavery is bad scared, sho'! Joe Leonard Smith, Catholic, over on de western sho', has jess set twelve niggers free. Governor Charley Ridgely has set two hundred and fifty free. John Randolph, dey say, is gwyn to set more dan three hundred free. Dar's fifty abolition societies in Nawf Carolina, eleven in Maryland, eight in ole Virginny, two in Delaware. Ho, ho! dey set' em free and we'll steal' em back! Ole Derrick Molleston will never be out of pork an' money!"