general manners and brilliant conversational powers had drawn about him troops of friends and a thriving business. In the evening we fell into conversation on the manners, customs and institutions peculiar to that country, the marked distinction between the wealthy and the slave-holding classes, and the poor class of whites, and the influence of their system of slave labor in producing these distinctions. He related much of what he had witnessed and heard himself, but nothing amused and interested us so much as what he told us of the experience and adventures of a young clergyman with whom he fell in company at Pittsburgh, Pa. He was going to Cynthiana, Ky., where he was expecting to settle. They traveled together and became not only acquainted, but interested in each other’s success, just entering, as they both were, into society so different from that in which they had been educated. On the subject of slavery they had never thought or cared much, but they had an impression that negroes were created expressly for slaves; that as to their capacity for the attainment of knowledge and science and the enjoyment of civilized life and social comforts and pleasures, there was no comparison between them and even the most ignorant and degraded of the white race. Therefore, they argued that slavery was the normal condition of the negro.
Although Cynthiana is not more than twenty-five miles from Carlisle, it so happened that Chapel and Rev. Mr. Platt, the clergyman above mentioned, did not meet until about a year after they came together into the State. Chapel was attending court in “Harrison Co., of which Cynthiana is the county seat, and called on Mr. Platt to renew their acquaintance. He met with a cordial reception, and was invited to spend his evenings with the reverend gentleman. In the course of the evening Chapel said, “Mr. Platt, how does this slave
