His long training and the tone of the society in which he had moved (though so despised a member of it) prejudiced him strongly against the man whose hospitality was so welcome.

On the other hand, the ideas which had for so long worked in his mind in his solitary intercommunings in the forest were entirely opposed to servitude.

In abstract principle he had long since condemned it, and desired to abolish it.

But here was the fact.
He had eaten at a slave's table, and sat with him face to face.

Theory and practice are often strangely at variance.