And Eben took off his glossy new black overcoat and put on Josiah’s old shabby brown one and sot off. And I don’t know how he and his wife settled it, and I don’t much care.
Wall, if you’ll believe it, Eben hadn’t much more’n got into his buggy at the gate when Cousin John Richard began agin, took up his remarks jest where he had laid ’em down. I don’t spoze he sensed Eben’s comin’ in hardly any.
I spoze it wuz some as if a fly should light on the nose of a Fourth of July oritor, it would be brushed off without noticin’ it, and the oration would go right on.
Sez John Richard, “All the religion and education in the world cannot make the two races unite harmoniously and become one people, with kindred tastes and united hearts and interests.”
Sez I agin, speakin’ mechanically, “You think the foot is too big for the shoe?”
“Yes, exactly,” sez he. “The shoe is a good sound one, but the foot is too big; it won’t go into it.”
“But,” sez I, “as Josiah remarked to you, wouldn’t it cost awfully?”
“Will it cost any less ten years from now? The colored population of the South increases at the rate of five hundred every twenty-four hours.
“By the most careful estimates it has been found that in less than twenty years the black race will out-number the whites to the number of a million. What will be done then? Will the white man leave this country to make room for the negro? It is plain that there will not be room for both.”
And I murmured almost entirely onbeknown to myself, “No, I don’t spoze he would.”