he was so destitute of every orthodox garment for a house-servant, that she, out of charity for the poor negro, had given him twenty dollars' worth of clothes -coat, vest, pants, shoes, and shirts.

Finding that the prosecutor was a Virginia gentleman, she visited him repeatedly, until he finally agreed to let the poor fellow off, as imprisonment produces no moral effect at all on the negro, and Henry promised that all his wages for a year should be faithfully handed to the merciful Virginia gentleman who had pardoned him, together with Musidora and her husband, who knew too much of the African to expect him to be an honest or high-minded representative of humanity. The return for all this blotting out of his transgressions was, that in two weeks he stole nearly a hundred dollars' worth of property out of Mr. Walsingham's house, and then scampered off, and never was heard of afterwards.

Thus ended the experiment of employing one of the free, educated, black gentlemen of the Northern States.

CHAPTER XX.

MR. WALSINGHAM now received letters so appalling as to the career of his talented son, whom he had left in a mercantile house in London, that he requested a friend who was returning to the United States after a long absence abroad, to bring Jefferson Walsingham along with him. Oh! how the father's heart was wrung when the unfortunate young man arrived in Washington-for intemperance, debauchery, and gambling had left their usual stereotyped mark on his wrecked form and withered countenance. Soon letters arrived from Europe that he had used his father's honored name to obtain fabulous sums of money from the most prominent persons of Mr. Walsingham's acquaintance. It was indeed wonderful how this irresponsible youug spendthrift had been able to deceive the most practical business men, so as to realize the largest drafts on the strength of innumerable false pretences. But his Indian dignity and modesty of bearing, and his imperturbability of countenance, presented an effectual shield against suspecting so highly educated a gentleman.

Indeed, he often boasted of his extraordinary talents in this respect, and confessed that with many common people, he had obtained moneyed sympathy by abusing his step-mother and then, again, praising her when conversing with the most refined and morally elevated whom he intended to take a toll from, on account of their great respect for his father.

Musidora's pride was so tortured (for it was impossible to refund the enormous sums of money thus swindled out of her husband's most appreciating friends) that she shut herself up in her chamber three days and three nights, in an anguish of mind, too intolerable for any consolation-for this insane gambler was her husband's only son, and bore his father's venerated name. Fasting and praying to God for help in this dire calamity, she besieged heaven to sustain her poor hopeless husband, whose intensely absorbing grief brought on a derangement of the whole nervous system, and in one week he was struck down with paralysis that no medical skill could reach.

Jefferson, who daily witnessed the misery he had brought upon the whole family, was still not in the least weaned from his darling vices. Indeed, he seemed as insensible as a marble statue to every interest save that of selfish indulgence. Conscience never appeared to speak loud enough to arrest his attention even for a moment.

Perhaps the chronic selfishness of young spendthrifts of this description is the most faithful miniature of that of Satan, who "goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour."

"The cloyed will,

(That satiate yet unsatisfied desire,

That tub both filled and running) ravening first
The lamb, longs after for the garbage."

Jefferson, while his noble father lay helpless and prostrate on his bed, waiting for death, Jefferson Walsingham still kept running around and inventing new

schemes for obtaining money from the friends of Masidora and her now imprisoned husband; while these said friends respected them too much to publicly prosecute this infatuated member of their family.

Musidora knew that no power on this earth coul1 reach that young man. But she also knew that the love of Jesus could regenerate any human being, without reference to the type of his moral diseases, from the day that He was promised as a Savior in the garden of Eden, after our first parents had eaten of the forbidden fruit, and proved that they possessed the germs of that higher-law disobedience that thrust Lucifer, star of the morning, out of heaven.

Musidora thoroughly believed in the expulsive power of a new affection in the heart of man, so she not only prayed and fasted before God, night and day, for the regeneration of her miserable step-son; but she also determined to wean him from vice by expending every energy on making his home pleasant to him. Whenever she could leave her helpless husband, she would run out and purchase presents so as to secure a recherché wardrobe for Jefferson, "for dress has a moral effect upon the conduct of mankind. Let any gentleman find himself with dirty boots, old surtout, soiled neckcloth, and a general negligence of dress, he will in all probability find a corresponding disposition by negligence of address."

Musidora furnished a delightful chamber, and innumerable books and writing materials, and encouraged this morally sick patient to write criticisms of new works, that at one time he was very gifted in analyzing. She invited young ladies to stay with her to amuse him

in the evenings, and she bought games for them to play with him, and taught him chess as the most interesting of them all. She required from her servants the most scrupulous deference to his orders, even to the neglect of her own. She sent for the best physicians to consult together about the propriety of carrying this not only morally, but physically, diseased young man, through a course of mercury, as an alterative to his shattered constitution. But the end of all these godlike exertions to rescue this poor fellow from the bottomless pit of infamy in this world and the next, was, that Jefferson Walsingham broke open the safe where all his father's gold was deposited, and then ran away with the accumulated treasure from the sale of his works of the patient industry of Mr. Walsingham; leaving him hopelessly paralyzed, with no means of recruiting his scattered fortune. Musidora and her husband never heard of him afterwards. Thus was Mr. Walsingham's wise mother's prescience of the danger of amalgamation with a different race* from

"THE BRIDGEPORT AMALGAMATION CASE. - The Hartford 'Press,' states that Mrs. Beach, the wealthy and handsome Bridgeport widow, who married George W. Francis, a black man, gave to her friends as one reason for her conduct, that she had received communications from her deceased husband in the spirit world, advising her to marry Francis, and stating that since he had left this vale of tears he had been conjugally united to the spirit of a colored damsel. The marriage ceremony was performed by Rev. Mr. Millet, in the evening, when the lady was so much disguised by 'frizzing' her hair, &c., that he did not suspect she was a white American woman. Francis once gained some notoriety as the supposed nephew of Soulouque, the Emperor of Hayti."