“Huh, man,” he snorted, “I never onlisted!”
“Well, why did you come over here, then?”
“I didn’t exac’ly come.”
“Well, you weren’t born over here, were you?”
“Naw suh, an’ I trusts not to die yere.”
“Well,” said the newspaper man, “you’re evidently past the draft age, and since you did not enlist and didn’t come over here of your own free will and weren’t born here, what I want to know is, how did you get here?”
“Mister,” said the negro, “it meks a kind of a sad story. My reg’lar home is Waycross, Georgia, an’ I suttinly does crave to be there right this minute! Here ’bout a yeah ago a w’ite man come down frum de Nawth, an’ he corralled a whole passel of us together an’ he say to us, he say: ‘Boys, I want you all to go up Nawth wid me an’ wuk fur de gove’mint. Plain niggers is gwine git eight dollars a day; fancy niggers ’at shows speed, is gwine git ten.’ An’ I sez to myse’f, I sez: ‘W’ite man, you don’t know it yit, but you’s lookin’ at one of the ten dollar ones right now!’
“So he loads a whole raft of us on board de steam cyars an’ he totes us plum’ to Noo Yawk city. An’ w’en we gits thar we wuks jest one mawnin’, down by de water. W’en de time come to knock off for dinner de w’ite man gets up on a box an’ meks us a speech. ‘Boys,’ he says, ‘I wuz wrong ’bout you—w’y, they ain’t a eight dollar nigger in the lot. Come on wid me to de warehouse an’ sign up for ten!’
“Natchelly I led de parade. Right behind me comes de w’ite man yellin’: ’Dis way to de warehouse!’ An’ right behind him comes all de rest of dem Waycross niggers, jest runnin’.
“So he teks us th’ough a kind of a long shed. An’ he ’scorts us ’crost a lil’ narrow plank. An’ he leads us th’ough a kind of a lil’ round iron do’.