“Dat’s de idear!” Vinegar agreed. “Git me a pencil an’ a piece of write-on paper!”
Perfervid advocates of temperance and total abstinence violently proclaim without fear of successful contradiction that in the haunts of the demon rum are hatched out all the iniquitous schemes for the destruction of the morals of the people. Nevertheless, this is the record of the most extensive reform ever achieved in any community in the United States, and it was born in the Hen-Scratch saloon, in a negro settlement called Dirty-Six, in Tickfall, Louisiana, on a certain day in December.
For two hours the four negroes sweated and fumed, consuming cigarettes, and devising their code of morals. At last Vinegar Atts laid the sheet of paper on the table and they surveyed the result:
No lofen.
No quorlen.
No fites.
No kussen.
No drams.
No gamblen.
No steelen.
“My Lawd!” Figger Bush sighed. “Dat takes away all my employments. Ef a nigger cain’t do none of dem things he mought as well be dead!”
“You’se gwine be soon enough, Figger,” Vinegar Atts reminded him in mournful tones. “Don’t go shovin’ up dat happenstance by wishin’ fer it!”
“‘No fites,’” Hitch Diamond read. “Dat puts me outen bizziness.”
“I ain’t got no job,” Skeeter mourned, looking at the paper. “‘No drams, no gamblen.’”
“‘No lofen,’” Vinegar Atts lamented. “I’s a powerful fat nigger to git active right sudden, at my age.”
Suddenly Atts sprang to his feet and howled: