“Do you know who that gentleman is that you’ve kept dawdling about here?” he demanded. “That is the Hon. Thomas B. Reed of Maine!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Munsey,” said the youth. “I thought all the time it was Dr. John Hall.”
“But don’t you know that Dr. Hall is dead?” said Mr. Munsey.
“Yes, sir,” said Truthful James, “that was what made it seem so strange to me that he should be calling.”
§ 83 A Violent Indisposition
A colored man, on appearing for work one morning, wore a countenance so battered that almost one might have been pardoned for assuming that its owner had made a more or less successful effort to run it through a meat chopper. The white man for whom the scarred and bruised victim worked took one look at that disfigured face and threw up both hands in horror and sympathy.
“Great heavens, boy,” he cried, “what have you been doing to yourself?”
“Me? I ain’t been doin’ nothin’ to myse’f,” explained the darky. “But somethin’ is done been did to me, Mr. Watkins. It’s lak dis, suh: Yistiddy evenin’ I got into a kind of an argymint wid another nigger an’ one word led to another, ez it will. An’ purty soon I up an’ hauled off an’ hit at him wid my fist.
“Well, seemed lak that irritated him. So he took an’ split my lip wide open wid a pair of brass knucks, an’ he blacked dis eye of mine clear down to my armpit an’ he tore one ear moughty nigh loose frum de side of my haid, an’ den, to cap all, he knocked me down and stomped up an’ down ’pun my stomach wid his feet. . . . Honest to Gawd, Mr. Watkins, I never did git so sick of a nigger in all my life!”