le of the biggest
question that has ever been ast. Which I disremember exactly how that
nigger question is worded, but they is always asting it in the South,
and answering of it different ways. We hadn't no idea how suspicious the
white people in them awful black spots on the map can get over any one
that comes along talking to their niggers. We didn't know anything about
niggers much, being both from the North, except what Doctor Kirby had
counted on when he made his medicine, and THAT he knowed second-handed
from other people. We didn't take 'em very serious, nor all the talk we
hearn about 'em down South.

But even at that we mightn't of got into any trouble if it hadn't of
been fur old Bishop Warren. But that is getting ahead of the story.

We got into that little town--I might jest as well call it
Cottonville--jest about supper time. Cottonville is a little place
of not more'n six hundred people. I guess four hundred of 'em must be
niggers.

After supper we got acquainted with purty nigh all the prominent
citizens in town. They was friendly with us, and we was friendly with
them. Georgia had jest went fur prohibition a few months before that,
and they hadn't opened up these here near-beer bar-rooms in the little
towns yet, like they had in Atlanta and the big towns. Georgia had went
prohibition so the niggers couldn't get whiskey, some said; but others
said they didn't know WHAT its excuse was. Them prominent citizens was
loafing around the hotel and every now and then inviting each other very
mysterious into a back room that use to be a pool parlour. They had
been several jugs come to town by express that day. We went back several
times ourselves, and soon began to get along purty well with them
prominent citizens.

Talking about this and that they finally edges around to the one
thing everybody is sure to get to talking about sooner or later in the
South--niggers. And then they gets to telling us about this here Bishop
Warren I has mentioned.

He was a nigger bishop, Bishop Warren was, and had a good deal of white
blood into him, they say. An ashy-coloured nigger, with bumps on his
face, fat as a possum, and as cunning as a fox. He had plenty of brains
into his head, too; but his brains had turned sour in his head the last
few years, and the bishop had crazy streaks running through his sense
now, like fat and lean mixed in a slab of bacon. He used to be friends
with a lot of big white folks, and the whites