I wuz fearful wrought up. I never had mistrusted there wuz such a state of things anywhere; it come all onbeknown onto me, and sort o’ paralyzed my faculties. I had forgot by this time, if you’ll believe it, whether I wuz a knittin’ or a tattin’. Why, I shouldn’t have been surprised if somebody had spoke up and said I wuz a shearin’ a sheep or pickin’ a goose. I shouldn’t have sensed it, as I know of, I wuz so dumbfoundered and lost and by the side of myself.
Sez I, “How?”
And sez he, “Let the colored race go into a home and a country of their own. Let them leave the people and the influences that paralyze and hinder their best efforts. Let them leave a race that they burden and hamper and oppress, for injustice reacts worse upon the victor than upon the victim. The two races cannot live together harmoniously; they have tried the experiment for hundreds of years, and failed.”
I murmured almost mechanically:
“Won’t religion and education make ’em harmoniouser?”
But before John Richard could answer my question, Eben Garlock come in for the mournin’ bundle, and I gin it to him.
He said he couldn’t set down, but still he didn’t seem ready to go.
Everybody has such visitors that don’t want to go and don’t want to stay, and you have to use head work to get ’em started either way.
Eben is different from his wife; he is more sincere and open-hearted, and hain’t so affected. He speaks out more than she duz, and finally he told us what wuz on his mind.
I see he had on a good new black overcoat, and the case wuz he wanted to swop with Josiah for the day of the funeral, and take his old London brown overcoat.