And sez I, “If you feel like that, I shouldn’t think you would oppose ’em in their skeme of colonization.” (I knew jest how bitter he had been about his brother Victor goin’, and the rest of his laborers.)
Sez I, “I should think, if you had such a opinion of ’em, the sooner you could get rid of the hull caboodle of ’em the better you would like it.”
He fairly scowled, he looked so mad.
But the thought of Genieve sort o’ buoyed me up, and duty, and I didn’t care for his black looks, not a mite.
And I felt that bein’ a visitor myself, I could branch out and argue with him to a better advantage to the laws of horspitality than if I wuz master or mistress of the house. So, as I sez, seein’ him determined to cut and slash, I jest boldly waded in.
But, good land! of all the talk, he did go on and talk about the deep and stupendous folly of colonization.
Why, he brung up every argument he could think on aginst the idee, and piled ’em up in front of me. But I jest sot there calmly a knittin’, a seamin’ two and one, and a not bein’ skairt by any of ’em.
And pretty soon—I spoze it wuz seein’ that I looked as calm as a summer day—he sort o’ curbed himself in, as it were, and begun to talk some calmer and composeder.
And sez he, “If there wuz no other insurmountable objection, look at the expense, the enormous cost of taking the blacks to Africa and supporting ’em there till they could become self-supporting.”
And I sez, “Will it make the conundrum any easier to get the answer to, to wait till the black people are twice as numerous? They obey the Bible strictly when it tells ’em to multiply and replenish the earth. In less than twenty years they will out-number the white race here by a million or more. What will be done then?”