"Just what might be expected of her," answered Bessy. "'Tis rather a sad story; but aunt Bab was not to blame. She looked at her very gravely, and said,--
"'Have you gone mad, Juno? You must remain here till you have recovered yourself, and are able to listen like a reasonable being, and I will then come and talk to you. Now it would be of no use.'
"She then left her, ordering her to be locked in. But we had not been gone five minutes, when one of the servants came running in to say, that Juno had jumped out of the window, and was dreadfully hurt. My aunt would not suffer me to see her, and all, I know further is, that she lingered for about five weeks, and then she died, and Aunt Bab wept very bitterly over the poor misguided creature, as she called her."
"It is a sad picture of human nature, indeed," I said, "and from what I see of the negro population I am inclined to attribute less power to education and more to race than I once did."
"The more you see of them, the more you will think so," answered Bessy. "Good education might, and I have no doubt does, produce a great deal of improvement; but as no cosmetic that ever was tried will make a black man white, so I don't believe any education will make his mind and character those of a white man. And yet, this good old preacher, uncle Jack, appears to be an extraordinary exception."
"It does not seem to me," I replied, "that that proves anything. The fair test might be, to take a certain number of children of different races, and educate them from the earliest period exactly upon the same system, and then judge of the race by the average number of each which you found capable, in a certain time, of arriving at an ascertained point of cultivation. Thus, if out of a hundred Anglo-Saxon children ten should reach the highest proposed point in ten years, and only one negro, we might conclude that the Anglo-Saxon race was far more susceptible of cultivation than that of the negro. But solitary instances prove nothing. And now, my dear Bessy, let us, for Heaven's sake, talk of some other subjects, for, otherwise, we shall both of us sink into philosophers--a degradation for which, I am sure, nature never intended us."
"I suspect you intend to be saucy, Richard," answered my fair companion; "but, in sober sadness, we have had a very grave and solemn walk of it--very different from yesterday's."