by a wrench, and you'll waken out of your dream to a sharp reality. Your
Northern philosophy ought to be old enough to teach you that spasms in
the body-politic shake off no atom of disease,--that reform, to be
enduring, must be patient, gradual, inflexible as the Great Reformer.
'The mills of God,' the old proverb says, 'grind surely.' But, Dorr,
they grind exceeding slow!"

Dorr watched Lamar with an amused smile. It pleased him to see his brain
waking up, eager, vehement. As for Ben, crouching there, if they talked
of him like a clod, heedless that his face deepened in stupor, that his
eyes had caught a strange, gloomy treachery,--we all do the same, you
know.

"What is your remedy, Lamar? You have no belief in the right of
Secession, I know," said Dorr.

"It's a bad instrument for a good end. Let the white Georgian come out
of his sloth, and the black will rise with him. Jefferson Davis may not
intend it, but God does. When we have our Lowell, our New York, when we
are a self-sustaining people instead of lazy land-princes, Ben here will
have climbed the second of the great steps of Humanity. Do you laugh at
us?" said Lamar, with a quiet self-reliance. "Charley, it needs only
work and ambition to cut the brute away from my face, and it will leave
traits very like your own. Ben's father was a Guinea fetich-worshipper;
when we stand where New England does, Ben's son will be ready for his
freedom."

"And while you theorize," laughed Dorr, "I hold you a prisoner, John,
and Ben knows it is his right to be free. He will not wait for the
grinding of the mill, I fancy."