"I saw, by his countenance, that something important to him had occurred, and the appearance of his collar only tended to confirm my suspicions. I accordingly asked him what was the trouble.
"'Trouble,' said he, 'enough of it. Sir,' he continued, 'last night I was locked up in a cell at the station-house, for exercising the privileges of a freeman—a native American citizen. I was arrested, and violently dragged off to that cell, where I remained last night, and this morning was tried before the magistrate, only, however, to be acquitted. What made it worse was, that I should be arrested with a nigger, and be tried with a nigger, and acquitted with a nigger. He was a huge nigger—a colossal nigger—a nigger fully six feet and four inches in height; his face betrayed no evidence of light—it was all shade; he was a nigger, above all others, so black, that he would make an excellent drum-major to a funeral procession, if custom sanctioned the employment of that non-commissioned official on such occasions. Inasmuch, however, as custom doesn't do any such thing, the next best use to which the sable giant could be put, would be to make his face the figurehead of a Broadway mourning store; with the exception of his large size and remarkable black face, the nigger in question looked very much like other niggers not in question. He was a nigger, in fact, who gave as his name the half-classic and half-descriptive appellation of Cesar Freeman. I have always been a "woolly-head" until now, but may I be bursted if I don't go and join the Know Nothings to-morrow, and begin a crusade against all niggers—particularly nigger-giants and nigger women.
"'How did this occur?' I inquired, anxiously.
"'I'll tell you,' said he. 'But before doing so however, I desire to state a fact. We have all our human weaknesses; indeed, it may be set down as a truism that human beings do have human weaknesses to a greater or less extent; I am a human being; I have my human weakness, and that weakness is my collars; it required years of experiment to bring my collars to their present perfection; nearly all of the quarrels I ever had have been with laundresses who have failed to do them up to my liking; if a man wishes to ruffle my temper he need only to ruffle my collar, and it is accomplished; tell me the Savings Bank, where I deposit my extra money, has collapsed in the region of the money-vault; tell me that I have got to attend a charity ball; give me the jumping toothache; place me in a Bowery stage with fourteen inside, and I in juxtaposition to a dirty woman with a squalling baby who has got the seven years' itch—all of these I can bear, but when it comes to interfere with my collars it is going a point too far. Now I come to the time when unforeseen circumstances brought me in violent collision with this nigger of African extraction; I was walking down the street, near where the belligerent demonstration took place, when I saw directly in front of me a long-tailed man in an amiable-appearing coat—no—an amiable-appearing coat in a long-tailed—no—I mean an amiable-appearing man in a long-tailed coat. For my life I could not conceive why that amiable individual's proclivities in matters of apparel should lead him to wear a garment of so ridiculous a cut. I had just come to the sage conclusion that it was because every donkey in the country chooses to have his hips appear high or low to suit the caprice of Broadway tailors, when at that moment the amiable person, together with his long-tailed coat, was driven from my mind. I became suddenly conscious that an important event had transpired. An elderly female nigger, in throwing water on a store-window which she was cleaning, did not confine her professional favors exclusively to the window for which she had been hired, but she disbursed copious supplies of Croton upon the passers-by, for which she had not been hired. In fact, I am bold to assert, that several persons were favored with several gratuitous duckings by this colored female. I was one of those persons; a bountiful current of water interrupted the current of my thoughts; like a juvenile Niagara, it dashed against my collar in the left side, as you can see. Now, my collar is impervious to perspiration, but it could not stand up under the soaking of a cataract; as my collar fell my choler rose; I looked around at the sable author of my troubles, and I saw on her face an exultant grin at what she had done. I felt as if I would like to have crammed a wet broom which she had in her hand down her throat, splint end downwards; for obvious reasons I did not do this; but I did speak to her in language expressive of my emphatic disapprobation of the unasked-for and informal baptism with which she had been pleased to favor me; I suppose my words must have frightened her; at any rate she fell off from a stool on which she was elevated; she gave a scream; this black Hercules came down the stairs; she informed him that I had insulted her; he looked at me with his teeth grinning as if he would like to have eaten me without gravy or condiment; he gave one diabolical grin, and then came at me. I am not pugnacious; a lamb-like inoffensiveness has ever been my prominent characteristic; I have a constitutional repugnance to a fight, either with weapons natural or artificial; if loaded fire-arms are around I never feel so safe as when I see the butt-ends pointed at my vital parts; though not a member of the Peace Society, yet that society has ever had in me an ardent sympathizer; peaceful though I be, yet, when the sleeping lion within me is aroused, I know no bounds to my rage, and I insist upon going about, seeking whom I may devour; I saw the belligerent attitude of my enemy; he struck me; we grappled; an insatiable desire to taste the flesh of a colored man at that instant seized upon me; in a moment the digits of his right hand were between my teeth; I know that for a moment or two hostilities were active; I became conscious, too, that hostilities ceased; I soon learned the cause; the cause was the arrival of two policemen, who are always around when they shouldn't be, and never when they should. I was brought to the station-house.'
"'Well, what took place before the court?' I asked.
"'At seven this morning,' said Buxton, 'we were brought before the judge, and put in a pen; on one side of me was the aforesaid nigger, and on the other side a disgusting piece of feminine humanity; an importation from Ireland, who had just come off from a bender. Our names were finally called, the nigger's first, by all that's holy. Two officers who arrested us were the witnesses; they testified that on last evening, about dusk, they were engaged in conversation on the corner of a street which forms the boundary line between their respective beats, when they saw a crowd collected on the sidewalk, about a square above; they ran there, and they saw me and the nigger engaged in a fight; they said that the nigger was striking me violently with his left fist; his right hand was between my teeth, while I was kicking and striking the nigger very generally and promiscuously, and a nigger woman who was present was laying the blows on me with a broom whenever she could; at that moment they arrested me and the nigger; it required all their strength to secure us, such was the violence of our efforts to get away; hence they were unable to take the woman into custody.
"'The judge showed the cussed bad taste to ask the nigger to make his statement first. The nigger said that I had insulted his wife, and had made improper proposals to her; that made me wrathy; I told him that he was guilty of uttering a falsehood before the court; emphatically pronounced his assertion relative to my making an insulting proposal to that feminine lump of animated charcoal, with whom he very properly cohabited, to be an unequivocal lie; I am no controversalist, and still less would I descend from my exalted height to engage in a controversy with that herculean African, especially after enduring the perspiration, which, despite my frantic efforts to the contrary, I was compelled to suffer during a hot night, in a cell where any respectable thermometer, if it could be induced to go into the cell once, if it was anything at all, would be a hundred at least; yes, sir,' he continued, 'and should you ever have a morbid desire to enter into controversy, recline your heated form of a hot night in the cell which I occupied, and by morning you will insist upon retiring into some secluded spot, from which secluded spot you can look dispassionately and unmoved upon the moral strifes of the world.
"'Well, the up-shot of the matter was that both of us were discharged.'
"I gave Mr. Buxton what consolation I could, after which he took his departure to put on a new collar."
When Mr. Spout had concluded his narration, he proceeded to awaken such of the members of the club as were still present, telling them that it was time to go home. But he did not succeed in fully arousing them to an appreciation of the lateness of the hour, until he had put ice into their boot-legs and shirt-bosoms.