“No, sir! I don’t believe in spiritualism, but for all that there are curious things in the world. Why is it that if a man’s name is Charles G. Haseltine he will lose his right leg in a railway accident? The police some years ago wanted a Charles G. Haseltine with a wooden right leg in the State of Massachusetts, and they found no less than five Charles G. Haseltines, and every one of them had lost his right leg in a railway accident. What makes it all the more curious is that they were no relation to one another, and not one of them had ever heard of the existence of the others. Then, will someone tell me what is the connection between darkies and chickens? I say ‘darkies’ instead of ‘niggers’ because I had a colored regiment on my right flank at the battle of Corinth, and that night I swore I would never say ‘nigger’ again. However, that don’t concern you. What I meant to say was that there is a connection between darkies and chickens which nobody has ever yet explained. Of course no darky can resist the temptation to steal a chicken. Everybody knows that. Why, I knew a colored minister who was as honest a man as the sun ever tried to tan—and failed—and I have known him to preach a sermon with a chicken that he had lifted on his way to meeting shoved up under his vest. He wouldn’t have stolen a dollar bill if he was starving, but he would steal every chicken that he could lay his hands on, no matter if his own chicken-house was crowded with chickens. It’s in the blood—or the skin—and no darky can help it.
“What was I going to say about the connection between darkies and chickens? I had very nearly forgotten it. This was what I was referring to. A chicken will draw a darky just as a dead sheep will draw vultures in Egypt, though there may have been no vultures within twenty miles when the sheep was killed. You may be living in a town where there isn’t a single darky within ten miles, but if you put up a chicken-house and stock it there will be darkies in the town within twenty-four hours, and just so long as your chicken-house has a chicken in it fresh darkies will continue to arrive from all sections of the country. This beats any trick that I ever saw a spiritual medium perform, and I can’t see the explanation of it. You may say that some one carries word to the darkies that there is a new chicken-house waiting to be visited, but the answer to this is that it isn’t true. My own idea is that it is a matter of instinct. When you carry a cat twenty miles away from home in a bag and let her out, we all know that her instinct will show her the way home again before you can get there yourself. Just in the same way instinct will draw a darky to a chicken-house he has never seen or heard of. You’ll say that to talk about instinct doesn’t explain the matter. That is true enough, but it makes you feel as if you had struck the trail, which is some satisfaction at any rate. So far as I can see, that is about all that scientific theories ever do.
“PREACH A SERMON WITH A CHICKEN UNDER HIS VEST.”
“If you care to listen, I’ll tell you what happened within my knowledge in connection with darkies and chickens. I was located a little after the war in the town of South Constantinople, in the western part of Illinois, and my next-door neighbor was Colonel Ephraim J. Hickox, who commanded the 95th Rhode Island Regiment. The town was a growing place, and it had the peculiarity that there wasn’t a darky in it. The nearest one lived over at West Damascus, seven miles away, and there was only two of him—he and his wife. Another curious thing about the place was the scarcity of labor. There weren’t above a dozen Irishmen in the place, and they wouldn’t touch a spade or a hoe under three dollars a day, and wouldn’t work more than four days in a week. You see, a certain amount of digging and gardening had to be done, and there wasn’t anybody to do it except these Irishmen, so they naturally made a good thing of it, working half the time and holding meetings for the redemption of Ireland the rest of the time in the bar-room of the International Hotel.
“One day Colonel Ephraim, as I always used to call him, wanted to drain his pasture lot, and he hired the Irishmen to dig a ditch about a quarter of a mile long. They would dig for a day, and then they would knock off and attend to suffering Ireland, till Ephraim, who was a quick-tempered man, was kept in a chronic state of rage. He had no notion of going into politics, so he didn’t care a straw what the Irishmen thought of him, and used to talk to them as free as if they couldn’t vote. Why, he actually refused to subscribe to a dynamite fund and for a gold crown to be presented to Mr. Gladstone, and you can judge how popular he was in Irish circles. I used to go down to Ephraim’s pasture every once in a while to see how his ditch was getting along, and one afternoon I found the whole lot of Irishmen lying on the grass smoking instead of working, and Ephraim in the very act of discharging them.
“‘Perhaps it’s “nagurs” that you’d be preferring,’ said one of the men, as they picked themselves up and made ready to leave.
“‘You bet it is,’ said Ephraim, ‘and, what’s more, I’ll have that ditch finished by darkies before the week is out.’ This seemed to amuse the Irishmen, for they went away in good spirits, in spite of the language that had been hove at them, and it amused me too, for I knew that there were no darkies to be had, no matter what wages a man might be willing to pay. I said as much to Ephraim, who, instead of taking it kindly, grew madder than ever, and said, ‘Colonel! I’ll bet you fifty dollars that I’ll have that ditch finished by darkies inside of four days, and that they’ll do all the digging without charging me a dollar.’
“‘If you’re going to send over into Kentucky and import negro labor,’ said I, ‘you can do it, and get your ditch dug, but you’ll have to pay either the darkies or the contractor who furnishes them.’
“‘I promise you not to pay a dollar to anybody, contractor or nigger. And I won’t ask anybody to send me a single man. What I’m betting on is that the darkies will come to my place of their own accord and work for nothing. Are you going to take the bet or ain’t you?’