“Jessie,” said I, and I paused a moment, for I wanted to give her a homoeopathic dose of common sense—and those little wee doses work like charms, that’s a fact. “Jessie,” says I, and I smiled, for I wanted her to shake off those voluntary trammels. “Jessie, the doctor ain’t quite quite tame, and you ain’t quite wild. You are both six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other, and just about as like as two peas.”
Well it’s astonishing what that little sentence did. An ounce of essence is worth a gallon of fluid. A wise saw is more valuable than a whole book, and a plain truth is better than an argument. She had no answer for that. She had been reasoning, without knowing it, as if in fact she had been in reality an Indian. She had imbibed in childhood the feelings of her mother, who had taken the first step and repented it—of one who had deserted, but had not been adopted—who became an exile and remained an alien—who had bartered her birthright for degradation and death. It is natural that regret for the past and despair for the future should have been the burden of the mournful ditties of such a woman; that she who had mated without love, and lived without affection, the slave, the drudge, but not the wife or companion of her master, should die with imprecations on her lips for a race who were the natural foes of her people, and who had reduced her to be an object of scorn and contempt to both. It is no wonder therefore poor Jessie had a repugnance to the union, when she remembered her mother, and the sad lesson her unhappy life and fearful death contained. It was a feeling difficult to overcome.
“Jessie,” sais I, “nature, instead of forbiddin’ it, approves of it; for like takes to like. I don’t say it to please you, but you are as good as he is, or any white man in the world. Your forefathers on your mother’s side are a brave, manly, intelligent race; they are free men, and have never been subdued or enslaved by any one: and if they have degenerated at all, it is because they have contracted, as you say, vices from the white man. You have reason to be proud of being descended from a race of warriors. On the other hand, your father is a Highlander, and they too have always been free, because they were brave; they are the noblest fellows in Europe. As for the English, there are none now, except in Wales, and they are called Taffies—which means lunatics, for they are awful proud, and their mountains are so high, every fellow says his ancestors were descended from the man in the moon. But the present race are a mixture of Taffies, French, Danes, Saxons, Scotch, and the Lord knows who all, and to my mind are all the better of it.”
“But the colour,” said she.
“As to colour!” said I, “nations differ in every shade, from black up to chalk white. The Portuguese, Italians, and Turks are darker than the Indian if anything; Spaniards and Greeks about the same.”
“And do they intermarry?”
“I guess they do,” said I; “the difference of language only stops them,—for it’s hard to make love when you can’t understand each other,—but colour never.”
“Is that now really true?” she said; “for I am ignorant of the world.”
“True as preachin’,” said I, “and as plain as poverty.”
She paused awhile, and said slowly: