What a situation, now, for a patriotic senator, that had been all the
week before spurring up the legislature of his native state to pass more
stringent resolutions against escaping fugitives, their harborers and
abettors!

Our good senator in his native state had not been exceeded by any of his
brethren at Washington, in the sort of eloquence which has won for them
immortal renown! How sublimely he had sat with his hands in his pockets,
and scouted all sentimental weakness of those who would put the welfare
of a few miserable fugitives before great state interests!

He was as bold as a lion about it, and "mightily convinced" not only
himself, but everybody that heard him;--but then his idea of a fugitive
was only an idea of the letters that spell the word,--or at the most,
the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle
with "Ran away from the subscriber" under it. The magic of the real
presence of distress,--the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling
human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony,--these he had never
tried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother,
a defenceless child,--like that one which was now wearing his lost boy's
little well-known cap; and so, as our poor senator was not stone or
steel,--as he was a man, and a downright noble-hearted one, too,--he
was, as everybody must see, in a sad case for his patriotism. And you
need not exult over him, good brother of the Southern States; for we
have some inklings that many of you, under similar circumstances,
would not do much better. We have reason to know, in Kentucky, as in
Mississippi, are noble and generous hearts, to whom never was tale of
suffering told in vain. Ah, good brother! is it fair for you to expect
of us services which your own brave, honorable heart would not allow you
to render, were you in our place?