"Don't be silly," said the cabman, and spat between his feet.
"Cheer up, long-face!" said another man, who had been listening. "He only means the cable from the States. Perhaps you've never heard of the White Man's Hope?"
Light at last broke upon Mr. Clarkson. "Of course," he said, "it's Independence Day! I've seen the American flag flying from several buildings. It has always appeared a most remarkable thing to me that we English people should thus ungrudgingly accept the celebration of our most disastrous national defeat. Such entire disappearance of racial animosity is, indeed, full of future promise. I suppose, if you liked, you might without exaggeration call it the White Man's Hope?"
"Stow it," said the cabman.
"No doubt the day is being marked in the United States by some special event," Mr. Clarkson continued, "and you are waiting for the account?"
No one answered. An American was reading aloud from a newspaper: "If the Imperturbable Colossus gets knocked out, a general assault upon all negroes throughout the States may be expected to ensue. The wail that goes up from Reno will be re-echoed from every land where the black problem sits like a nightmare on the chest. It is not too much to say that a new chapter in the world's history will open before our astonished eyes, so adequately is the gigantic struggle between the black and white races prefigured in the persons of their chosen champions."
All listened with attention.
"That's what I call thickened truth," said the American, looking solemnly round. "If that coloured gentleman with a yellow streak worries our battle-hardened veteran and undefeated hero of all time, the negro will grow scarce."
"They've been praying for Jeffries in all the American churches," said one, in the solemn pause that followed this announcement.
"So they have for Johnson in the negro churches," said another, "but he counts most on his mother's prayers. She lives in Chicago."