nobs and stick to 'em tight.' So Zenas grabbed hold of 'em like all possessed, but he hadn't more than fairly got hold before he lay sprawlin on the floor. The 'principle' had knocked him clean over. Now, Zenas was a terribul feller to smoke, and allers carried his pockets full of lusifer matches to lite his pipe with. It so happened that he had a hull box-full in his coat-tail pocket as he keeled over on the floor, and as he fell they scratched agin one another so strong that they all got afire. It warn't but a little while afore Zenas' coat-tail was all in a blaze, and before it could be put out it had burnt an awful big hole in the seat of his trowsers, and schorched him thereabouts amazinly. Zenas yelled and hollered awful, and sed he didn't want to know enthing more about 'applyin the principle.' Now," ses I, "Kernel, I hope you won't hev as bad luck as Zenas did, but depend on't, this applyin principles you don't exactly understand is dangerous business. If you don't get burnt somewhere it will be a wonder." "Wal," ses Linkin, "Majer, you are a cute chap in tellin a story, but now, tell me, do you think the nigger an the white man didn't cum from the same parrient?" "Now," ses I, "Kernel, that's axin a deep question. You see its onpossibul to tell what the Creatur may have done. He might have made only one kind of man at fust, an then altered their constitushins, an complexions, an brains afterwards. You see everything is possibul to the Creatur. Or the nigger may have cum from Ham, who was cussed for his sins, but then I don't see that it is enything agin the scriptoors to believe that all the kinds of men were made at the beginnin jest as they are now. But it don't make eny difference how they cum so, so long as they _are_ different. You can't eny more make a white man out of a nigger now than you can breed a lion out of a polecat. You see, it's clar agin natur to expect to make the nigger enything but a nigger. You can't get a peach out of a crab-apple, nor a pumpkin out of a watermelon, nor eagles out of ducks' eggs. You can't raise chickens from egg-plants, or produce goslins from gooseberries. You see, Kernel, everything in natur must go accordin to natur. If the nigger had been intended to be equil to the white man, hed been made jest like a white man, and the very fact that he ain't made so, is proof positive that he warn't intended to be put in a white man's place. Trying to make a nigger act like a white man is jest like old Sol Hopkins, one year harnessing his off ox an his hoss together to plow corn. The ox was lazy as he could be, an the hoss was a young, high-strung animil, an such a pullin an haulin team you never did see. It almost killed both. You see, it was workin agin natur. It was tryin to make a hoss an ox, and an ox a hoss, neither of which things can be did. You see, Kernel, _everything in natur must go according to natur_."