“Well, den, I will go and get sunthen nice for you. Oh! my ole missus was a lubbly cook; I don’t believe in my heart de Queen ob England could hold a candle to her! she knowed twenty-two and a half ways to cook Indian corn, and ten or twelve ob ’em she inwented herself dat was de stonishment ob ebbery one.”
“Half a way,” I said, “what do you mean by that?”
“Why, Massa, de common slommachy way people ab ob boiling it on de cob; dat she said was only half a way. Oh, Lordy gracious, one way she wented, de corn was as white as snow, as light as puff, and so delicate it disgested itself in de mout.”
“You can go,” said Cutler.
“Tankee, Massa,” said Sorrow, with a mingled air of submission and fun, as much as to say, “I guess I don’t want leave for that, anyhow, but I thank you all the same as if I did,” and making a scrape of his hind-leg, he retired.
“Slick,” said Cutler, “it isn’t right to allow that nigger to swallow so much rum! How can one wonder at their degradation, when a man like you permits them to drink in that manner?”
“Exactly,” sais I, “you think and talk like all abolitionists, as my old friend Colonel Crockett used to say, the Yankees always do. He said, ‘When they sent them to pick their cherries, they made them whistle all the time, so that they couldn’t eat any.’ I understand blacks better than you do. Lock up your liquor and they will steal it, for their moral perceptions are weak. Trust them, and teach them to use, and not abuse it. Do that, and they will be grateful, and prove themselves trustworthy. That fellow’s drinking is more for the fun of the thing than the love of liquor. Negroes are not drunkards. They are droll boys; but, Cutler, long before thrashing machines were invented, there was a command, ‘not to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.’ Put that in your pipe, my boy, the next time you prepare your Kinnikennic for smoking, will you?”
“‘Kinnikennic,’” said the doctor, “what under the sun is that?”
“A composition,” sais I, “of dry leaves of certain aromatic plants and barks of various kinds of trees, an excellent substitute for tobacco, but when mixed with it, something super-superior. If we can get into the woods, I will show you how to prepare it; but, Doctor,” sais I, “I build no theories on the subject of the Africans; I leave their construction to other and wiser men than myself. Here is a sample of the raw material, can it be manufactured into civilization of a high order? Q stands for query, don’t it? Well, all I shall do is to put a Q to it, and let politicians answer it; but I can’t help thinking there is some truth in the old saw, ‘Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.’”