He was a nigger bishop, Bishop Warren was, and had a good deal of white blood into him, they say. An ashy-coloured nigger, with bumps on his face, fat as a possum, and as cunning as a fox. He had plenty of brains into his head, too; but his brains had turned sour in his head the last few years, and the bishop had crazy streaks running through his sense now, like fat and lean mixed in a slab of bacon. He used to be friends with a lot of big white folks, and the whites depended on him at one time to preach orderliness and obedience and agriculture and being in their place to the niggers. Fur years they thought he preached that-a-way. He always DID preach that-a-way when any whites was around, and he set on platforms sometimes with white preachers, and he got good donations fur schemes of different kinds. But gradual the suspicion got around that when he was alone with a lot of niggers his nigger blood would get the best of him, and what he preached wasn't white supremacy at all, but hopefulness of being equal.
So the whites had fell away from him, and then his graft was gone, and then his brains turned sour in his head and got to working and fermenting in it like cider getting hard, and he made a few bad breaks by not being careful what he said before white people. But the niggers liked him all the better fur that.
They always had been more or less hell in the bishop's heart. He had brains and he knowed it, and the white folks had let him see THEY knowed it, too. And he was part white, and his white forefathers had been big men in their day, and yet, in spite of all of that, he had to herd with niggers and to pertend he liked it. He was both white and black in his feelings about things, so some of his feelings counterdicted others, and one of these here race riots went on all the time in his own insides. But gradual he got to the place where they was spells he hated both whites and niggers, but he hated the whites the worst. And now, in the last two or three years, since his crazy streaks had growed as big as his sensible streaks, or bigger, they was no telling what he would preach to them niggers. But whatever he preached most of them would believe. It might be something crazy and harmless, or it might be crazy and harmful.
He had been holding some revival meetings in nigger churches right there in that very county, and was at it not fur away from there right then. The idea had got around he was preaching some most unusual foolishness to the blacks. Fur the niggers was all acting like they knowed something too good to mention to the white folks, all about there. But some white men had gone to one of the meetings, and the bishop had preached one of his old-time sermons whilst they was there, telling the niggers to be orderly and agriculturous—he was considerable of a fox yet. But he and the rest of the niggers was so DERNED anxious to be thought agriculturous and servitudinous that the whites smelt a rat, and wished he would go, fur they didn't want to chase him without they had to.
Jest when we was getting along fine one of them prominent citizens asts the doctor was we there figgering on buying some land?
"No," says the doctor, "we wasn't."
They was silence fur quite a little spell. Each prominent citizen had mebby had his hopes of unloading some. They all looks a little sad, and then another prominent citizen asts us into the back room agin.
When we returns to the front room another prominent citizen makes a little speech that was quite beautiful to hear, and says mebby we represents some new concern that ain't never been in them parts and is figgering on buying cotton.
"No," the doctor says, "we ain't cotton buyers."
Another prominent citizen has the idea mebby we is figgering on one of these here inter-Reuben trolley lines, so the Rubes in one village can ride over and visit the Rubes in the next. And another one thinks mebby we is figgering on a telephone line. And each one makes a very eloquent little speech about them things, and rings in something about our fair Southland. And when both of them misses their guess it is time fur another visit to the back room.