“The dumb fools!” hollered out Josiah. “What did they act so like idiots for—and villains? The Southerners always did act like the Old Harry anyway.”
“THE DUMB FOOLS!”
My dear companion is fervid and impassioned in his feelin’s and easily wrought on, and he felt what he said. John Richard wuz a relation on his own side, and he could not calmly brook the idee of his sufferin’s.
But Cousin John didn’t look mad, nor excited, nor anything. He had a sort of a patient look onto his face, and as if he had tried to reason things out for some time.
“Such a state of affairs was inevitable,” sez he. “Then you don’t blame the cussed fools, do you?” yelled out Josiah, fearfully wrought up and agitated.
Oh, what a word to use, and to a minister too—“cussed”! I felt as if I should sink right down into the suller—I wuz about over the potato ben—and I didn’t much care if I did sink, I felt so worked up.
But Cousin John Richard didn’t seem to mind it at all. He had got up into a higher region than my soul wuz a sailin’ round in—he had got up so high that little buzzin’, stingin’ insects that worried me didn’t touch him; he had got up into a calm, pure atmosphire where they couldn’t fly round.
He went on calm as a full moon on a clear night, and sez he:
“It is difficult to put the blame for this state of affairs on any one class, the evil is so far spread. The evil root was planted centuries ago, and we are partaking of its poison fruit to-day.