“It is hot here, hot as that hottest of all places, and I hear they are going to have that over here in Baconsville pretty soon; I hear so,” and the Doctor shook his fat sides with a chuckling laugh, adding: “You must have important business to call you out to-day.”
“It is quite important, quite,” replied General Baker. “I have got a suit on hand in Baconsville that is quite important, and if that other place you are talking about comes there, I hope I shall not find it hotter than this hollow is. Niggers may stand it, but I cannot.”
Both gentlemen were delighted and laughed loudly.
“I’ve just come from there,” said Dr. Wise.
“From where—Baconsville? or the other hot place?”
“Oh, from Baconsville,” replied the medical man, laughing. “I couldn’t have got away from the other place with all this fat.”
The laugh again subsiding, he continued: “You see I have a patient I am watching over there; and being in the neighborhood, was called in to see two or three of the better class of colored people. I’m afraid you’ll have trouble, there, at that suit. The niggers are saucy, and very angry about that collision between the Bakers and the militia.”
“Well, Doctor, the colored people in South Carolina have become so insolent and insurrectionary, and intractable, and have taken on so many intolerable airs, that they must be made to know their places. You will see their wenches on the streets of Augusta and Charleston, and all our cities, with their “pin-backs” and “button shoes,” and “bustles,” and indeed imitating our ladies in everything; and they even act as though they expected a white man to step aside and let them pass, as if they were the ladies themselves. I saw an affair in Charleston the other day that made my blood boil, and I involuntarily laid my hand upon my pistol, but fortunately I was preserved from using it.
“Three great black—creatures, I suppose I must call them men—were walking up the street, and met three young ladies whom I know to be members of one of our best families. What do you think but that these impudent brutes actually crowded our ladies into the gutter—made them actually step off the pavement for want of room to pass! Quite fortunately the ditch was dry, and not deep—four or five inches, at most. But such indignities are too great a tax on the forbearance of a gentleman of gallantry! Only one of the ladies actually stepped off, but then, time was when I could have blown out the brains of all three of the rascals, and the community and the State would have sustained me. But those were days of “home rule.” Alas! when shall we ever see them again!