Then I sez, “It wuz probable for the same reason that you didn’t liberate Zekiel—mostly selfishness!”
“What! what did you say?” He could not believe his ear; he craned his neck, he turned the other ear. He wuz browbeat and stunted; and agin he sez: “What did you say?”
And I sez agin, calm as cream, but sharp and keen as a simiter, “I said it wuz selfishness, Deacon, and the power of old custom—jest the reasons why you didn’t free Zekiel.”
His linement fell more’n a inch. Like the Queen of Sheba before Solomon (only different sex) he had no spirit left in him.
He never had mistrusted; it made him feel so awful good to run the South further down than anything or anybody wuz ever run—he never mistrusted that he had ever done anything onjust, or mean, or selfish.
He loved to deplore Southern sins, but never looked to see if Northerners wuzn’t committin’ jest as ojeus ones.
I mean good, well-meanin’ Christian men, not to say anything about our white slaves in the cities who make shirts for five cents apiece, and sign their contracts with their blood.
Nor the old young children who are shut away from God’s sunshine and air in Northern manufactories and mines, and who are never free to be out under the beautiful sky till the sun has gone down or the grass is growin’ between it and their hollow, pitiful faces.
Nor the droves of street ruffians and beggars whose souls and bodies suffer and hunger jest as much under the Northern Star as under the Southern Cross.