"Are you for
humanity?"
"Madam, as I hope reward, I am! Those of us who dare say so much
are few in numbers to-day. We are so few, my dear lady, that we
belong together. All of us who have influence--and that I trust
may be said of both of us, who now meet for the first time--we are
so few that I, a stranger to you, though not, I trust, wholly
unrecommended, dare come to you to-night."
"With what purpose, then. Sir?"
"With the immediate purpose of learning at first hand the truth of
the revolutionary system in Europe. I have not been abroad of
late, indeed not for some years. But I know that our diplomacy is
all a-tangle. The reports are at variance, and we get them colored
by partisan politics. This slavery agitation is simply a political
game, at which both parties and all sides are merely playing.
Party desirability, party safety--that is the cry in the South as
much as in the North. Yet all the time I know, as you know, of the
hundreds of thousands of men who are leaving Europe to come to this
country.
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