“Cut off the legs and wings and breast of the goose,” sais I, “and split him down lengthways, and right agin the back-bone is small cells, and there is the goose’s soul, it’s black meat, pretty much nigger colour. Oh, it’s grand! It’s the most delicate part of the bird. It’s what I always ask for myself, when folks say, ‘Mr Slick, what part shall I help you to—a slice of the breast, a wing, a side-bone, or the deacon’s nose, or what?’ Everybody laughs at that last word, especially if there is a deacon at table, for it sounds unctious, as he calls it, and he can excuse a joke on it. So he laughs himself, in token of approbation of the tid-bits being reserved for him. ‘Give me the soul,’ sais I; and this I will say, a most delicious thing it is, too. Now, don’t groan, Cutler—keep that for the tooth-ache, or a campmeetin’; it’s a waste of breath; for as we don’t exactly know where our own souls reside, what harm is there to pursue such an interesting investigation as to our black brethren. My private opinion is, if a nigger has one, it is located in his heel.”
“Oh, Mr Slick!” said he, “oh!” and he held up both hands.
“Well,” sais I, “Cutler, just listen to reason now, just hear me; you have been all round the world, but never in it; now, I have been a great deal in it, but don’t care for goin’ round it. It don’t pay. Did you ever see a nigger who had the gout? for they feed on the best, and drink of the best, when they are household servants down south, and often have the gout. If you have, did you ever hear one say, ‘Get off my toes?’ No, never, nor any other created critter. They always say, ‘Get off my heel.’ They are all like Lucy Long, ‘when her foot was in the market-house, her heel was in Main-street.’ It is the pride and boast of a darky. His head is as thick as a ram’s, but his heel is very sensitive. Now, does the soul reside there? Did you ever study a dead nigger’s heel, as we do a horse’s frog. All the feeling of a horse is there. Wound that, and he never recovers; he is foundered—his heart is broke. Now, if a nigger has a soul, and it ain’t in his gizzard, and can’t in natur be in his skull, why, it stands to reason it must be in his heel.”
“Oh, Mr Slick,” said Cutler, “I never thought I should have heard this from you. It’s downright profanity.”
“It’s no such thing,” sais I, “it’s merely a philosophical investigation. Mr Cutler,” sais I, “let us understand each other. I have been brought up by a minister as well as you, and I believe your father, the clergyman at Barnstaple, was as good a man as ever lived; but Barnstaple is a small place. My dear old master, Mr Hopewell, was an old man who had seen a great deal in his time, and knew a great deal, for he had ‘gone through the mill.’”
“What is that?” said he.
“Why,” sais I, “when he was a boy, he was intended, like Washington, for a land-surveyor, and studied that branch of business, and was to go to the woods to lay out lots. Well, a day or two arter he was diplomatised as a surveyor, he went to bathe in a mill-pond, and the mill was a goin’ like all statiee, and sucked him into the flume, and he went through into the race below, and came out t’other side with both his legs broke. It was a dreadful accident, and gave him serious reflections, for as he lay in bed, he thought he might just as easily have broke his neck. Well, in our country about Slickville, any man arter that who was wise and had experience of life, was said to have ‘gone through the mill.’ Do you take?”
But he didn’t answer.
“Well, your father and my good old friend brought us both up religiously, and I hope taught us what was right. But, Mr Cutler—”
“Don’t call me Mr,” said he.