The next day, when we were deep in the woods, I asked Dr.
Sandford if he knew Mr. Davis of Mississippi. He answered yes,
rather drily. I knew the doctor knew everybody.
I asked, why Preston called him a great man.
"Does he call him a great man?" Dr. Sandford asked.
"Do you?"
"No, not I, Daisy. But that may not hinder the fact. And I may
not have Mr. Gary's means of judging."
"What means can he have?" I said.
"Daisy," said Dr. Sandford suddenly, when I had forgotten the
question in plunging through a thicket of brushwood, — "if the
North and the South should split on the subject of slavery,
what side would you take?"
"What do you mean by a 'split'?" I asked slowly, in my
wonderment.
"The States are not precisely like a perfect crystal, Daisy;
and there is an incipient cleavage somewhere about Mason and
Dixon's line."
"I do not know what line that is."
"No. Well, for practical purposes, you may take it as the line
between the slave States and the free."
"But how could there be a split?" I asked.
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