F the audience was surprised at what next happened, what may be said of the astounded candidate when he saw the powerful form of Mrs. Parsons rise from her seat near him and calmly stride with the tread of an angry man to the speaker's stand and take off her curtained bonnet and begin to wave it up and down to indicate that she wanted them to keep their places?
“I never made a speech in my life,” she gulped—“that is, not outside of an experience meetin'. But, people, ef this ain't an experience meeting I never went to one. Ef the Lord God had told me Hisse'f in a blazonin' voice from heaven that any human bein' could take such a swivelled-up, contemptible shape as the man that's yelled at you like a sick calf to-day, I never would have believed it. I've got a right to be heard. I couldn't set still. It would give me St. Vitus's dance to try it ten minutes longer. I've got a right to talk, because, friends and neighbors, this contemptible creature has, in a roundabout way, accused me of law-breaking, an'—”
“Why, madam!” Wiggin gasped, as he half rose and stared around in utter bewilderment. “I don't even know you! I never laid eyes on you before this minute—”
“Well, take a good look at me now!” Mrs. Parsons hurled at him, “for I'm the woman that helped Pete Warren git away from the sheriff, when your sort were after the poor, silly nigger to lynch him for a crime he had nothin' to do with. If you are right in all your empty tirade this morning, I'm a woman unfit for the community I live in, and if I have to share that honor with a man of your stamp, I'll lynch myself on the first tree I come to.”
She turned from the astounded, suddenly crestfallen speaker to the open-mouthed audience.
“Listen to me, men, women, and children!” she thundered, in a voice that was as steady and clear in resonance as a bell. “If there was ever a crafty, spider-like politician on earth you have listened to him spout to-day. He's picked out the one big sore-spot in your kind natures and he's punched it, and jabbed it, and lacerated it with every sort of thorn he could stick into it, till he gained his aim in makin' you one and all so blind with rage at the black race that you are about to overlook the good in yore own.
“There are two sides to this matter, and you would be pore excuses for men if you jest looked at one side of it. Carson Dwight is the other candidate, and I don't know but one thing agin his character, and that is that he ever allowed his name to be put up along with this man's. It's a funny sort of race, anyway—run by a greyhound and a jack-rabbit.”
A ripple of amusement passed over many faces, and there were several open laughs over Wiggin's evident discomfiture. He started to rise, but voices from all parts of the gathering cried out: “Sit down, Wiggin! Sit down, it ain't yore time!”
“No, it hain't his time,” said Mrs. Parsons, unrolling her bonnet like a switchman's flag and waving it to and fro. “I started to tell you about Carson Dwight. He can't help bein' born in a rich family any more'n I could in a pore one, but I'm here to tell you that since I had the moral backbone to aid that nigger to git away I've thanked God a thousand times that I did that much to help genuine justice along. I could listen to forty million men like this candidate expound his views and it wouldn't alter me one smidgen in the belief that Carson Dwight has acted only as a true Christian would. He knew that nigger. He had known him, I'm told, from childhood up. He knew the sort of black stock the boy sprung from, an' the white family he was trained in, an' he simply didn't believe he was guilty of that crime. Believing that, thar wasn't but one honest thing for him to do, and that was to fight for the pore thing's rights. He knew that most of the racket agin the boy was got up by t'other candidate, and he set about to save the pore, beggin' darky's neck from the halter or his body from the burning brush-heap. Did he do it at a sacrifice? Huh, answer me that! Where did you ever see another politician on the eve of his election that would take up such a' issue as that, infuriating nearly every person who had promised to vote for him? Where will you find a young man with enough stamina to stand on a horse-block over the heads of hundreds of howling demons, and with one wound from a pistol on his brow, darin' 'em to shoot ag'in and holdin' on like a bull-dog to the pore cowerin' wreck at his feet?”