“Why, it ain’t possible? Did you never hear of it nother?”
“No, never. Well now, do tell!”
“So you never heerd tell of it, nor never sot eyes on it?”
“Certainly never.”
“Well, that bangs the bush, now! I suppose you didn’t. Guess you never did, and never will, nor no other traveller, nother, that ever slept in shoe-leather. They keep dark about these atrocities. Well, the Black Stole is a loose kind of shirt-coat, like an English carter’s frock; only, it is of a different colour. It is black instead of white, and made of nigger hide, beautifully tanned, and dressed as soft as a glove. It ain’t every nigger’s hide that’s fit for a stole. If they are too young, it is too much like kid; if they are too old, it’s like sole leather, it’s so tough; and if they have been whipt, as all on ‘em have a’most, why the back is all cut to pieces, and the hide ruined. It takes several sound nigger skins to make a stole; but when made, it’s a beautiful article, that’s a fact.
“It is used on a plantation for punishment. When the whip don’t do its work, strip a slave, and jist clap on to him the Black Stole. Dress him up in a dead man’s skin, and it frightens him near about to death. You’ll hear him screetch for a mile a’most, so ‘tarnally skeered. And the best of the fun is, that all the rest of the herd, bulls, cows, and calves, run away from him, jist as if he was a panther.”
“Fun, Sir! Do you call this fun?”
“Why sartainly I do. Ain’t it better nor whippin’ to death? “What’s a Stole arter all? It’s nothin’ but a coat. Philosophizin’ on it, Stranger, there is nothin’ to shock a man. The dead don’t feel. Skinnin’, then, ain’t cruel, nor is it immoral. To bury a good hide, is, waste—waste is wicked. There are more good hides buried in the States, black and white, every year, than would pay the poor-rates and state-taxes. They make excellent huntin’-coats, and would make beautiful razor-straps, bindin’ for books, and such like things; it would make a noble export. Tannin’ in hemlock bark cures the horrid nigger flavour. But then, we hante arrived at that state of philosophy; and when it is confined to one class of the human family, it would be dangerous. The skin of a crippled slave might be worth more than the critter was himself; and I make no doubt, we should soon hear of a stray nigger being shot for his hide, as you do of a moose for his skin, and a bear for his fur.
“Indeed, that is the reason (though I shouldn’t mention it as an Attache), that our government won’t now concur to suppress the slave trade. They say the prisoners will all be murdered, and their peels sold; and that vessels, instead of taking, in at Africa a cargo of humans, will take in a cargo of hides, as they do to South America. As a Christian, a philanthropist, indeed, as a man, this is a horrid subject to contemplate, ain’t it?”
“Indeed it is,” said Turkey. “I feel a little overcome—my head swims—I am oppressed with nausea—I must go below.”