“I was a-listenin' hard, massa, and I was takin' notes.”
“You taking notes!” exclaimed the minister.
“Sartain, massa; all de oder gem'men take notes too.”
“Well, Cuffee, let us see your notes,” said his master.
Hereupon Cuffee produced his sheet of paper. It was scrawled all over with all sorts of marks and lines; worse than if a dozen spiders, escaped from an ink-bottle, had kept up a day's march over it. It would have puzzled Champollion himself to have unraveled its mysteries.
The minister looked over the notes, as if with great attention, and at length said,
“Why, Cuffee, this is all nonsense!”
“E'yah! e'yah!” replied Cuffee; “I t'ought so myse'f, all de time you was a-preachin'! Dat's a fac'! E'yah! e'yah!”
The minister didn't tell the story himself, being rather shy about the conclusion. It leaked out, however, through Cuffee, one day, and his master “never heard the last of it.”