“Well, Cutler, then, I have been ‘through the mill,’ in that sense. I have acquired a knowledge of the world; if I havn’t, the kicks I have taken must have fallen on barren ground. I know the chalk line in life won’t do always to travel by. If you go straight a-head, a bottomless quag or a precipice will bring you up all standing as sure as fate. Well, they don’t stop me, for I give them the go-by, and make a level line without a tunnel, or tubular bridge, or any other scientific folly; I get to the end my own way—and it ain’t a slow one neither. Let me be, and put this in your pipe. I have set many a man straight before now, but I never put one on the wrong road since I was raised. I dare say you have heard I cheated in clocks—I never did. I have sold a fellow one for five pounds that cost me one; skill did that. Let him send to London, and get one of Barraud’s, as father did, for twenty-five pounds sterling. Will it keep better time? I guess not. Is that a case of sell? Well, my knowledge of horse-flesh ain’t to be sneezed at. I buy one for fifty dollars and sell him for two hundred; that’s skill again—it ain’t a cheat. A merchant, thinking a Russian war inevitable, buys flour at four dollars a barrel, and sells it in a month at sixteen. Is that a fraud? There is roguery in all trades but our own. Let me alone therefore. There is wisdom sometimes in a fool’s answer; the learned are simple, the ignorant wise; hear them both; above all, hear them out; and if they don’t talk with a looseness, draw them out. If Newman had talked as well as studied, he never would have quitted his church. He didn’t convince himself he was wrong; he bothered himself, so he didn’t at last know right from wrong. If other folks had talked freely, they would have met him on the road, and told him, ‘You have lost your way, old boy; there is a river a-head of you, and a very civil ferryman there; he will take you over free gratis for nothing; but the deuce a bit will he bring you back, there is an embargo that side of the water.’ Now let me alone; I don’t talk nonsense for nothing, and when you tack this way and that way, and beat the ‘Black Hawk’ up agen the wind, I won’t tell you you don’t steer right on end on a bee line, and go as straight as a loon’s leg. Do you take?”
“I understand you,” he said, “but still I don’t see the use of saying what you don’t mean. Perhaps it’s my ignorance or prejudice, or whatever you choose to call it; but I dare say you know what you are about.”
“Cutler,” sais I, “I warn’t born yesterday. The truth is, so much nonsense is talked about niggers, I feel riled when I think of it. It actilly makes me feel spotty on the back.1 When I was to London last, I was asked to attend a meetin’ for foundin’ a college for our coloured brethren. Uncle Tom had set some folks half crazy, and others half mad, and what he couldn’t do Aunt Harriet did. ‘Well,’ sais I to myself, ‘is this bunkum, or what in natur is it? If I go, I shall be set down as a spooney abolitionist; if I don’t go, I shall be set down as an overseer or nigger driver, and not a clockmaker. I can’t please nobody any way, and, what is wus, I don’t believe I shall please Mr Slick, no how I can fix it. Howsoever, I will go and see which way the mule kicks.’
1 This extraordinary effect of anger and fear on animals was observed centuries before America was discovered. Statius, a writer who fully equals Mr Slick both in his affectation and bombast, thus alludes to it:—
“Qualis ubi audito venantum murmure tigris,
Horruit in maculas.”
“As when the tigress hears the hunter’s din,
Dark angry spots distain her glossy skin.”
“Well, Lord Blotherumskite jumps up, and makes a speech; and what do you think he set about proving? Why, that darkies had immortal souls—as if any created critter ever doubted it! and he pitched into us Yankees and the poor colonists like a thousand of bricks. The fact is, the way he painted us both out, one would think he doubted whether we had any souls. The pious galls turned up the whites of their eyes like ducks in thunder, as if they expected drakes to fall from the skies, and the low church folks called out, ‘Hear, hear,’ as if he had discovered the passage at the North Pole, which I do think might be made of some use if it warn’t blocked up with ice for everlastingly. And he talked of that great big he-nigger, Uncle Tom Lavender, who was as large as a bull buffalo. He said he only wished he was in the House of Peers, for he would have astonished their lordships. Well, so far he was correct, for if he had been in their hot room, I think Master Lavender would have astonished their weak nerves so, not many would have waited to be counted. There would soon have been a dispersion, but there never would have been a division.”
“Well, what did you do?” said Cutler.
“Kept my word,” sais I, “as I always do. I seconded the motion, but I gave them a dose of common sense, as a foundation to build upon. I told them niggers must be prepared for liberty, and when they were sufficiently instructed to receive and appreciate the blessing, they must have elementary knowledge, furst in religion, and then in the useful arts, before a college should be attempted, and so on, and then took up my hat and walked out. Well, they almost hissed me, and the sour virgins who bottled up all their humanity to pour out on the niggers, actilly pointed at me, and called me a Yankee Pussyite. I had some capital stories to excite ’em with, but I didn’t think they were worth the powder and shot. It takes a great many strange people, Cutler,” sais I, “to make a world. I used to like to put the leak into folks wunst, but I have given it up in disgust now.”
“Why?” sais he.