, is
gougin'. The sleight-of-hand is beautiful. All other sleights we know
are tricks; but this is reality; there is the eye of your adversary in
your hand; there is no mistake. It's the real thing. You feel you have
him; that you have set your mark on him, and that you have took your
satisfaction. The throb of delight felt by a 'monokolister' is beyond
all conception."

"Oh heavens!" said the traveller, "Oh horror of horrors! I never heard
any thing so dreadful. Your manner of telling it, too, adds to its
terrors. You appear to view the practice with a proper Christian
disgust; and yet you talk like an amateur. Oh, the thing is sickening."

"It is, indeed," said Mr. Slick, "particularly to him that loses his
peeper. But the dexterity, you know, is another thing. It is very
scientific. He has two niggers, has Squire Wormwood, who teach the
wrastlin' and gouge-sparrin'; but practisin' for the eye is done for
punishment of runaways. He has plenty of subjects. All the planters
send their fugit_ive_ niggers there to be practised on for an eye. The
scholars ain't allowed to take more than one eye out of them; if they
do, they have to pay for the nigger; for he is no sort o' good after,
for nothin' but to pick oakum. I could go through the form, and give you
the cries to the life, but I won't; it is too horrid; it really is too
dreadful."

"Oh do, I beg of you," said the traveller.

"I cannot, indeed; it is too shocking. It will disgust you."

"Oh, not at all," said Turkey, "when I know it is simulated, and not
real, it is another thing."

"I cannot, indeed," said Mr. Slick. "It would shock your philanthropic
soul, and set your very teeth of humanity on edge. But have you ever
seen--the Black Stole?"

"No."

"Never seen the Black Stole?"

"No, never."

"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
y