me with his teeth grinning as if he would
like to have eaten me without gravy or condiment; he gave one diabolical
grin, and then came at me. I am not pugnacious; a lamb-like
inoffensiveness has ever been my prominent characteristic; I have a
constitutional repugnance to a fight, either with weapons natural or
artificial; if loaded fire-arms are around I never feel so safe as when
I see the butt-ends pointed at my vital parts; though not a member of
the Peace Society, yet that society has ever had in me an ardent
sympathizer; peaceful though I be, yet, when the sleeping lion within me
is aroused, I know no bounds to my rage, and I insist upon going about,
seeking whom I may devour; I saw the belligerent attitude of my enemy;
he struck me; we grappled; an insatiable desire to taste the flesh of a
colored man at that instant seized upon me; in a moment the digits of
his right hand were between my teeth; I know that for a moment or two
hostilities were active; I became conscious, too, that hostilities
ceased; I soon learned the cause; the cause was the arrival of two
policemen, who are always around when they shouldn't be, and never when
they should. I was brought to the station-house.'

"'Well, what took place before the court?' I asked.

"'At seven this morning,' said Buxton, 'we were brought before the
judge, and put in a pen; on one side of me was the aforesaid nigger,
and on the other side a disgusting piece of feminine humanity; an
importation from Ireland, who had just come off from a bender. Our names
were finally called, the nigger's first, by all that's holy. Two
officers who arrested us were the witnesses; they testified that on last
evening, about dusk, they were engaged in conversation on the corner of
a street which forms the boundary line between their respective beats,
when they saw a crowd collected on the sidewalk, about a square above;
they ran there, and they saw me and the nigger engaged in a fight; they
said that the nigger was striking me violently with his left fist; his
right hand was between my teeth, while I was kicking and striking the
nigger very generally and promiscuously, and a nigger woman who was
present was laying the blows on me with a broom whenever she could; at
that moment they arrested me and the nigger; it required all their
strength to secure us, such was the violence of our efforts to get away;
hence they were unable to take the woman into custody.

"'The judge showed the cusse