Slick, "is at hand--it is already workin' its
own cure. They must recede before our free and enlightened citizens
like the Indians; our folks will buy them out, and they must give
place to a more intelligent and ac-TIVE people. They must go to the
lands of Labrador, or be located back of Canada; they can hold on
there a few years, until the wave of civilization reaches them,
and then they must move again, as the savages do. It is decreed; I
hear the bugle of destiny a-soundin' of their retreat, as plain as
anything. Congress will give them a concession of land, if they
petition, away to Alleghany's backside territory, and grant them
relief for a few years; for we are out of debt, and don't know what
to do with our surplus revenue. The only way to shame them, that I
know, would be to sarve them as Uncle Enoch sarved a neighbour of his
in Varginny.
"There was a lady that had a plantation near hand to his'n, and
there was only a small river atwixt the two houses, so that folks
could hear each other talk across it. Well, she was a dreadful
cross-grained woman, a real catamount, as savage as a she bear that
has cubs, an old farrow critter, as ugly as sin, and one that both
hooked and kicked too--a most particular onmarciful she-devil, that's
a fact. She used to have some of her niggers tied up every day,
and flogged uncommon severe, and their screams and screeches were
horrid--no soul could stand it; nothin' was heerd all day, but 'Oh
Lord Missus! Oh Lord Missus!' Enoch was fairly sick of the sound, for
he was a tender-hearted man, and says he to her one day, 'Now do marm
find out some other place to give your cattle the cowskin, for it
worries me to hear 'em take on so dreadful bad; I can't stand it, I
vow; they are flesh and blood as well as we be, though the meat is
a different colour.
Pages:
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96