His Victim.
“The idee of your follerin’ sech a custom as this. I scorn and despise sech doin’s, and I don’t see what a nation can be thinkin’ on to allow it to go on.”
Al Faizi writ down quite a lot in that book of hisen about the bull-fightin’, and he seemed to be lookin’ for a peticular page to jot down his notes.
And Josiah sez (he hain’t no scruples about questionin’ the noble heathen), sez he, “What are you lookin’ for, Fazer?”
He sez calmly, “I am looking for the page where I wrote down the doings of John Sullivan and other American prize-fighters. I wish to put public exhibitions of this nature together.”
His tone wuz as calm and serene as a cool afternoon in June. He hadn’t a shade of sarcasm or irony in his axent; no, he simply grouped similar occurrences together.
And where wuz my feathers that had stood up hautily on my foretop as I condemned another country’s doin’s and cuttin’s up? Where wuz they? They wuz droopin’ and hangin’ down limp on my foretop as I sot and meditated how we in America allowed prize-fighters to knock and bruise and maim each other in public for the delight of the throngin’ multitude. Then fill hull sides of our American newspapers with minute details of their punchin’ and knockin’ down and actin’, for the eyes of our youth to peruse and emulate. Deeds of religion and science and philanthropy all pushed into the background, amongst the advertisements, while the papers were flooded with the deeds of men fighters and men killers.
The idee! What wuz I, to talk about the doin’s of Spain or the doin’s of a Josiah, and look down on ’em? Truly, folks who live in glass housen mustn’t throw stuns; how many, many times I realized this deep truth when I witnessed doin’s I didn’t like in foreign countries!