“I don’t see no reason fer gittin’ sour an’ ugly, brudders,” Mustard began. “Nobody ain’t gwine lose much ef he don’t git elected presidunt of de league. In de last year I ain’t got nothin’ fer my presidunt job but a cuss-word eve’y time I do somepin dat don’t please nobody. Of co’se I wants to keep on wid dis job an’ hopes you won’t fergit to vote fer me. Pap Curtain says he’s a corn-fiel’, cotton-fiel’ nigger, but dar ain’t no man, white ner black, dat ever seed him wuckin’ in no kind of fiel’ as a country nigger oughter do. He lives in dis town, an’ he owns his house in dis town. As you-all knows, I’s a real country nigger, never did live in town, an’ I been de overseer of Marse Tom’s plantation fer twenty year. I tries to stand by de high notions of de Uplift. I preaches dat a feller ought to dress up in work clothes when he wucks, an’ put on his compan’y clothes when he goes out in sawciety, an’ wear his Sunday clothes at de lodge an’ de fun’ral an’ de meetin’-house——” At this point the apple-eating adherent of Pap Curtain had consumed his apple to the core. He balanced it on his thumb as a child prepares to shoot a marble, and flicked it across the room, where it landed on the top of Mustard Prophet’s bald head. Mustard Prophet stepped down from the chair on which he was standing, walked quietly across the room, laid hold of the collar of the offender, kicked his shins, punched his jaw, then turned him around and booted him across the room. It was no more than the offender deserved, but he offered all the resistance and counter-offensive in his power, and while this was going on someone slipped behind Mustard and administered a lusty and soul-satisfying kick to him. The notion became contagious. The two forces joined in combat, but, strange to say, they did not fight with fists, but with feet. “Look at dat!” Little Bit exclaimed, as he scrambled to a safe place on the top of the bar, where he danced up and down in his high-heeled pumps. “Eve’ybody is tryin’ to kick eve’ybody else!” In a moment the crowd was so cramped for room that they had to abandon that mode of combat and began to fight with their fists. They milled around and around, pounding, scrouging, punching with elbows, while their voices rose in a mighty diaphony of imprecation and abuse. “Lawd! Lawd!” Little Bit exclaimed in a prayerful voice from his place of safety on the bar. “Eve’ybody is tryin’ to hit eve’ybody else!” In the fury of battle the men sought other weapons and found the numerous chairs most convenient. In the jam they found it impossible to swing the chairs and hit with them, so they held the chairs before them, as a lion-tamer does, and charged their opponents, holding their heads low to avoid being clubbed. The resemblance to a lot of milling, horning cattle struck Little Bit at once, and from his vantage-point upon the bar he announced the procedure: “Eve’y bully is tryin’ to hook eve’ybody else!”