"He canno' be," he said, and then, seeing his words were not understood, he added: "He 'ave no Cause. Dad peop' 'ave no Cause." He went on from this with many pauses and gropings after words and idiom, to tell, with a plaintiveness that seemed to Frowenfeld almost unmanly, the reasons why the people, a little of whose blood had been enough to blast his life, would never be free by the force of their own arm. Reduced to the meanings which he vainly tried to convey in words, his statement was this: that that people was not a people. Their cause--was in Africa. They upheld it there--they lost it there--and to those that are here the struggle was over; they were, one and all, prisoners of war.
"You speak of them in the third person," said Frowenfeld.
"Ah ham nod a slev."
"Are you certain of that?" asked the tenant.
His landlord looked at him.
"It seems to me," said Frowenfeld, "that you--your class--the free quadroons--are the saddest slaves of all. Your men, for a little property, and your women, for a little amorous attention, let themselves be shorn even of the virtue of discontent, and for a paltry bait of sham freedom have consented to endure a tyrannous contumely which flattens them into the dirt like grass under a slab. I would rather be a runaway in the swamps than content myself with such a freedom. As your class stands before the world to-day--free in form but slaves in spirit--you are--I do not know but I was almost ready to say--a warning to philanthropists!"
The free man of color slowly arose.
"I trust you know," said Frowenfeld, "that I say nothing in offence."
"Havery word is tru'," replied the sad man.
"Mr. Grandissime," said the apothecary, as his landlord sank back again into his seat, "I know you are a broken-hearted man."