other men gave notice to quit if he
remained."

"The reason?"

"His skin."

"The reason is not 'so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door, but
it is enough.' Of course they wouldn't work with him, and my uncle
Surrey, begging your pardon, should not have attempted anything so
Quixotic."

"His skin covering so many excellent qualities, and these qualities
gaining recognition,--that was the cause. They worked with him so long
as he was a servant of servants: so soon as he demonstrated that he
could strike out strongly and swim, they knocked him under; and, proving
that he could walk alone, they ran hastily to shove him to the wall."

"What! quoting my own words against me?"

"Anglo-Saxon says we are the masters: we monopolize the strength and
courage, the beauty, intelligence, power. These creatures,--what are
they? poor, worthless, lazy, ignorant, good for nothing but to be used
as machines, to obey. When lo! one of these dumb machines suddenly
starts forth with a man's face; this creature no longer obeys, but
evinces a right to command; and Anglo-Saxon speedily breaks him in
pieces."

"Come, Willie, I hope you're not going to assert these people our
equals,--that would be too much."

"They have no intelligence, Anglo-Saxon declares,--then refuses them
schools, while he takes of their money to help educate his own sons.
They have no ambition,--then closes upon them every door of honorable
advancement, and cries through the key-hole, Serve, or starve. They
cannot stand alone, they have no faculty for rising,--then, if one of
them finds foothold, the ground is undermined beneath him. If a head is
seen above the crowd, the ladder is jerked away, and he is trampled into
the dust where he is fallen. If he stays in the position to which
Anglo-Saxon assigns him, he is a worthless nigger; if he protests
against it, he is an insolent nigger; if he rises above it, he is a
nigger not to be tolerated at all,--to be crushed and buried speedily."

"Now, Willie, 'no more of this, an thou lovest me.' I came not out
to-day to listen to an abolition harangue, nor a moral homily, but to
have a good time, to be civil and merry withal, if you will allow it. Of
course you don't like Franklin's discharge, and of course you have done
something to compensate him. I know--you have found him another place.
No,--you couldn't do that?

"No, I couldn't."

"Well, you've settled him somewhere,--confess."

"He has some work for t