“I’ll tell yer why they don’t come. They dasn’t. That’s why.
“They’re afraid, because they’re slaves and dasn’t speak up fer themselves. If they was to come over here and say to this committee, ‘We want you to protect us in our rights for the reason that we’re sufferin’ and frozing in the winter,’ what would happen?
“Why, before them men got through speakin’ their names would be taken and telegraphed to their masters, and when they got back to their cars them masters would tell them they hadn’t no more use for ’em no more furever.”
Herein surely one may trace the effects of pea-nuts as easily as white paint can be seen on a negro.
Now let us turn to a sample of English “as she is wrote” and apparently spoken by the American who can read:—
The story about that fisherman wasn’t so bad. He was an old guy, and so poor he had a hard time getting three squares a day, and he had a wife and three kids to support. For some reason too deep for your uncle, he had a rule to pitch his nets in the sea only four times a day. One morning he went out fishing before daylight, and the first drag he made, he copped out a dead donkey. That made him pretty sore. Dead donks were a frost, and he was out one throw. He win out a lot of mud, the next throw, and he was sick, and he makes a howl about fortune.
“Here I am,” says he, “hustling all day long and every day in the week; I got no other graft but this; and yet as hard as I wrestle I can’t pay rent. A poor man has no chance. The smooth guys get all the tapioca, and the honest citizen nit.”
Then he throws again, and finds another gold brick—stones, shells, and stuff. I guess he was pretty wild when he sees that. Three throws to the bad and nairy fish.
When the sun came over the hill, he flopped down on his knees and prayed like all good Mussulmens, and after that gave the Lord another song.