They had wonderful minds, both on ’em, so I always said, and I petted ’em a sight and thought everything on ’em.
But the “niggers” in their eyes wuz nuthin’ and never could be anything but slaves; in that capacity they wuz willin’ to do anything for ’em—doctor ’em when they wuz sick, and clothe ’em and take care on ’em.
They wuz willin’ to call ’em Uncle and Aunt and Mammy, but to call ’em Mr. or Mrs. wuz a abomination to ’em; and one woman rebuked me hard for callin’ a old black preacher Mr. Peters.
Sez she, “I wouldn’t think you would call a low-down nigger ‘Mr.’”
But I sez, “I heard you call him Uncle, and that is goin’ ahead of me; for much as I respect him for his good, Christian qualities, I wouldn’t go so fur as to tell a wrong story in order to claim relationship with him. He hain’t no kin to me, and so I am more distant to him and call him Mister.”
But Mrs. Stanwood (that wuz her name) tosted her head, and I see my deep, powerful argument hadn’t convinced her.
And most imegiatly after she begun to run down the white teachers in the colored schools and run the idee of their puttin’ themselves down on a equality with niggers and bein’ so intimate with ’em.
“But,” sez I, “you have told me that your little girl always sleeps with her colored nurse, and you did with yours when you wuz a child. And, ’sez I, “that seems to me about as intimate as anybody can get, to sleep in the same bed; and when both are a layin’ down, they seem to be pretty much on a equality—that is,” sez I, reasonable, “if their pillers are of the same height and bigness.”
And I resoomed—“I never hearn of any white teacher bein’ in that state of equality with the colored people,” sez I; “they are a laborin’ for their souls and minds mostly, and you can’t seem to get on such intimate terms with them, if you try, as you can with bodies.”
Miss Stanwood tosted her head fearful high at this, and didn’t seem impressed by the depth and solidity of my argument no more than if it had been a whiff of wind from a alkelie desert. It wuz offensive to her. And she never seemed to care about conversin’ with me on them topics agin.