After breakfast you have family prayers. 'Can
you read, Nesimus?' you inquire. 'O yes, master; missis and the young
missises taught us all to read.' Your little boy hands him, with the
rest, a Testament, and names the place of reading. Strange to say,
yesterday you finished 'Titus,' and the portion to be read in course is
'Philemon!'"
"Almost a providence," said Mrs. North.
"How would you feel, Mr. North?" said I.
"Why, feel? How should I feel?" said he. "You will answer for me,
perhaps, and say, 'Read Philemon; pray; and then say, Come, Nesimus, I
am going to send you back to Professor A.B. I will write a letter to
him, and pay your passage.'"
"What objection would you make to this?" said I.
He thought a moment, and in the meanwhile his shrewd wife said,--
"Why, husband, do you hesitate? Say this: 'What! I? and Bunker Hill
within a day's march of my house, and grandfather's old sword over my
library door?'"
"I am sick of hearing about Bunker Hill in this connection," said he.
"Any one would think that it is one of the 'sacred mountains' in Holy
Writ."
"But," said his wife, "If some of Paul's ancestors had had Bunker Hill
privileges and influences, do you think Paul would have written the
Epistle to Philemon? Unfortunate Apostle! Say," said his wife again,
before he spoke, "that you believe in progress, that that epistle might
have been right enough in its day, but that now 'we need an anti-slavery
Bible and an anti-slavery God.
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