"Oh, no; I said I would rather have him than any wheel horse that would pull that blindly. Saddle horses, you know, are of a higher grade." "I was in hopes so, sir, and I thought I would try to ride this one, but blast me if he didn't try to shake me off him right into the creek!" "Oh," said Mr. Clem, "I forgot to tell you that he used to travel with a circus. Yes, sir, and an actor used to stand on him to jump headlong into a tank of water, and he was taught to shake himself to announce his readiness for the leap--" "But he laid down with me, sir." "Yes, and I was going to say, that a part of his duty was to go into the tank after the actor. A fact, Bob," he added, nodding at Young Master, who had begun to laugh at him. "Horses, you know, are taught to do most anything. Yes, sir, but getting back to the question of unrest now so strongly marked throughout the country, I want to say that something is going to happen and happen blunt, too. No human government can long stand the internal pullings and haulings that this one is subjected to." "But what is going to be done?" Old Master cried. Mr. Clem shrugged his shoulders. "Something is going to pop pretty soon and pop like a whip," said he. "A glass house is going to be broken and hoar frost will gather on leaves never intended for the chill air. The whole trouble comes from slavery and I, for one, am bold enough to say that the end is surely not far off." "I don't want you to say it at my table, sir," Old Master almost fiercely shouted. "I don't want you to talk treason at my board." Not in the least was Mr. Clem offended, nor was he at all put out by Old Master's violence. "Guilford," said he, "the trouble is that the South has got the negro mixed up with its religion and with its notion of good government. To own a slave no longer stops at the possession of a piece of property, but becomes so much of a sentiment that the man who does not care to own one is looked upon as an outlaw. And if he declares that he would not own one, that his conscience is against it, he is put down as a traitor to the South, seeking to overturn the American government." Old Miss threw up her head and sniffed the unsavory air. "Clem," she said, "I don't want you to talk that way in the presence of my son. Why, it wouldn't astonish me to hear you say that a negro is as good as a white man!"