"D—d bosh!" said Tom Gordon.
Aunt Nesbit looked across the table as if she were going to faint. But Mr. Jekyl's composure was not in the slightest degree interrupted.
"I can tell you," he said, "that, in a business, practical view,—for I am used to investments,—that, since the publishing of those catechisms, and the missionaries' work among the niggers, the value of that kind of property has risen ten per cent. They are better contented. They don't run away, as they used to. Just that simple idea that their master stands in God's place to them. Why, you see, it cuts its way."
"I have a radical objection to all that kind of instruction," said Clayton.
Aunt Nesbit opened her eyes, as if she could hardly believe her hearing.
"And pray what is your objection?" said Mr. Jekyl, with an unmoved countenance.
"My objection is that it is all a lie," said Clayton, in such a positive tone that everybody looked at him with a start.
Clayton was one of those silent men who are seldom roused to talk, but who go with a rush when they are. Not seeming to notice the startled looks of the company, he went on: "It's a worse lie, because it's told to bewilder a simple, ignorant, confiding creature. I never could conceive how a decent man could ever look another man in the face and say such things. I remember reading, in one of the missionary reports, that when this doctrine was first propounded in an assembly of negroes somewhere, all the most intelligent of them got up and walked deliberately out of the house; and I honor them for it."
"Good for them!" said Tom Gordon. "I can keep my niggers down without any such stuff as that!"