‘’Gamation! what’s dat?’
‘It means whites and blacks marrying together.’
‘O dat’s it! as fo’ such things they ’pends mostly on peples’ tas’. Fo’ my part, I have a colored woman fo’ a wife,—that’s my choice,—an’ if my frien’ here wants a black wife, an’ if she is pleased with him, I’m suah I shan’t get mad about it.’
Soon after he commenced collecting funds to redeem his family from bondage, he was invited to go to a school-house in Villenova. When near the place he saw two boys chopping, and heard one of them say: ‘There’s the nigger.’
Jo stopped and said: ‘I ain’t a nigger! I allus pays my debts; my massa was a nigger. See here! when you chop, you be a chopper, ain’t dat so?’
‘Yes,’ responded the boys.
‘Well, when a man nigs, I call him a nigger. Now ol’ massa nigged me out of all I earned in my life. Of course he is a nigger.’ Then Jo sang the chorus to one of Geo. W. Clark’s Liberty songs:
‘They worked me all de day,
Widout one cent of pay;
So I took my flight