"Yes, sir," he went on, "the horse trader is a man of skill, going about sharpening the wits of society. He stirs the blood of cupidity and then teaches man a lesson, enforcing the moral that the glittering is not always the gold. He is an orator and his subject is horse. Through the horse he reads human nature. He is self-confident, never tells too long a story, and people like to hear him talk. Ladies sometimes sniff at him and say that he is horsey, but when they have been sufficiently bored by the empty prattle of the refined dolt, they return to the horseman to be entertained. Bob," he added, after going to the fire-place to spit, and returning to put his feet upon the table, "there is one type of man that I should like to see hanged—the negro-trader."
"Nearly always a brute," Young Master replied.
"Always, Bob. And society, even in this State, holds him in contempt, yet recognizes the justice, or I should say, fails to recognize the injustice of the institution he serves. D— me if it ain't riling!" he cried, striking the table with his heel. Master moved the ink stand till further away and leaned back in his chair. Mr. Clem continued: "The South is an exotic, living under glass. But one day the glass will be smashed and the cold air will blow in. What could be more disease-breeding than our present state of affairs, one end of the republic heating with degenerate luxury, the other end cool with self-reliant industry?"
"Uncle Clem, they have turned you into a Yankee," said the young man.
"By the hoofs, they have opened my eyes and if to see is to be a Yankee, then I am one."
"But having seen, do you now come to sow eye-opening seeds, in fact, to scatter trouble?"
"I've got as much right in this State as any man that lives in it; I carried a gun into Mexico and I wear the scar of a leaden missile."
"No one questions your right, and I, for one, am warm in welcome of you. But you turned your back upon Kentucky, shifted your citizenship to another State."
Mr. Clem jerked his feet off the table, went to the fire-place, spat out his tobacco, and began to walk up and down the room, with his hands behind him after the manner of Old Master.
"Bob," he said, pointing as he spoke, "there, at the north corner of the lane, where the steps go over the stone fence, I stood in my country's uniform and told a girl good-bye. She clung to me like a sweet vine, and with trembling fingers I loosened the tendrils of her love. Behind a gallant warrior I marched into the City of Mexico, thrilled not with the victory, but with the thought that my face should soon be homeward set. That night I received a letter telling me of her perfidy. She did not write—my brother's hand sent the news. I couldn't believe it—in my breast I called him a liar. But I came home with a quaking heart, to find that she had married a negro-trader. And then, in taking up my small belongings to leave the State, I swore that I would never return so long as she was in it alive. Once that fellow came to Illinois to catch a run-away slave. He caught the fugitive at a town called Princeton. I chanced to be there. A noble-hearted man named Bryant, brother of the poet, heard the negro's pitiful story and then turned upon the trader. 'Sir,' said he, 'the shadow of a black and outrageous law may fall upon your case, but humanity which is above all law, cries out for the protection of this poor creature. Be gone from here.'