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"Yes sir, as soon as I can."

"How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

"And you are a bright lad, I am told. No doubt, you will do credit to Oxford; but I have come to talk with you about America. I may go there myself."

The boy opened his bright blue eyes and said:

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It is a glorious land. It has not so many people as England, nor such

great houses; but the forests

and plains and mountains are grand."

"There is a great country south of the Savannah River," said Oglethorpe.

Noah was well versed in Virginia geography and history and answered:

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COL. OGLETHORPE.

"Yes sir; but no one can safely live there. It is the neutral ground between the Spaniards and English, and they are always at war."

"The Spaniards view with increased jealousy the rapid increase of English settlements in America, especially in the region bordering on Florida, which Castilians claim by right of first discovery, said Oglethorpe. "The English are also rapidly

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gaining a monopoly of the Indian trade, and are exercising a wide influence over the native inhabitants in the gulf region, who have been taught by past sad experiences to look on the Spaniards as their abiding enemies. No doubt the Castilians in Florida will cast all the obstacles they can in the way of any further English settlements at the south."

"Do you contemplate a settlement in the south?” "I do."

"Where?" asked Noah.

"South of the Savannah.

When

you are in London, come and see me, as I want to talk with you further about your country."

Noah Stevens promised to accept the invitation, and Oglethorpe went away.

It was evident even to the lad that Colonel Oglethorpe was well posted on affairs in South Carolinia. The dangers which menaced the people of that colony were fully understood and appreciated by the colonel, who, however, did not hesitate to brave them. That colony early in the eighteenth century was well stocked with slaves from Africa, who, in the rice-planting districts, performed nearly all the manual labor, and became essential to the prosperity of the colony. In order to cripple the advancement of the English settlements, the Spaniards enticed their slaves to run

away, promising them freedom and the rights of citizenship if they would come to St. Augustine.

This plan worked so effectually, that a complete regiment of negroes was found at St. Augustine, who were taught to hate the English as their most

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"DO YOU CONTEMPLATE A SETTLEMENT IN THE SOUTH?"

bitter and inveterate enemies. This was an alarming state of things for the South Carolinians, and they anxiously sought a remedy for the evil.

Selfishness and philanthropy went hand in hand in founding the great commonwealth of Georgia. Between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers, there

was a region wholly unoccupied by white inhabitants at the time Oglethorpe and the youth Noah Stevens discussed the condition of the New World. The South Carolinians proposed to erect a barrier between themselves and the Spaniards in Florida, by planting an English Colony in that region. They asked the British government to do so; but there were great obstacles in the way, and so far they had failed to accomplish anything. Voluntary emigrants preferred a settled country, away from immediate danger; and a penal colony for British convicts was not desirable.

Oglethorpe, however, was a man with a great heart in his body which beat for all mankind. He was very much exercised about the condition of prisoners for debt in Great Britain. These men,

guiltless of any crime, were crowding the jails of the kingdom, and enduring sufferings more horrible than those inflicted upon negro slaves in the West Indies. Disease and moral degradation were making sad havoc among them. The hearts of the benevolent yearned to relieve them. A kindhearted citizen of London, of great wealth, bequeathed his fortune to the government to be employed in liberating the most deserving insolvent debtors from the jails, where they were doomed to hopeless indigence and misery by cruel laws oftentimes more cruelly administered.

This act of generosity caused Parliament to appoint a committee to inquire into the condition of prisoners for debt. Colonel Oglethorpe, as humane as he was brave, was at that time a member of Parliament, and it was he who made the suggestion that such a committee should be appointed. Oglethorpe was made chairman of the committee and at once entered with vigor and zeal upon his duties.

The revelations of those prisons are almost incredible. Howard's writings have left vivid pen pictures of those scenes, and the pencil of Hogarth given us actual delineations of them. The English merchant, unfortunate in business, often through no fault of his own, was suddenly hurled from a sphere of affluence and usefulness to the dreadful dens called prisons, with the vile and vicious as their only associates. So terrible was the fear of men incurring obligations which they could not pay, that healthy speculations, which are the life of business, almost ceased, and trade suffered.

Mr. Lossing, in his history "Our Country," cites an incident which appeals to the hearts of all feeling men, as it appealed to the soul of the founder of Georgia.

"Oglethorpe stood before one of those men, who had been a distinguished alderman in London when he was a boy, and had been highly esteemed for his many virtues and practical benevolence. He

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