Back toward my hearth-stone looking, where my ham and eggs were cooking, Shaking, quaking as no mortal ever shaked or quaked before, Soon I heard the ugly sinner mutter forth these words, “_Some dinner_,” Looking still more gaunt and thinner, even than he looked before, These the words the heathen mutter’d――the sole and only sound then uttered, As down from his high jump he flutter’d ’lighting on his major toe, “Dinner,” said he, nothing more. Then his impudence beginning, he displayed his gums in grinning, And with eyes aught else but winning, leer’d upon me from the door, Speaking thusly: “’Tis your treat, man, I’ll never go into the street, man, Till I get some grub to eat, man, I shall _never_ leave your door, Never quit them aigs and bacon, now just done, I’m very sure, Never till I’ve cleaned the platter, though you beat me till I roar, Treat me, or I’ll charge ’em sure.” Then toward the fireplace marching, where my coffee too was parching, Boldly stalked this sassy nigger right across my chamber-floor, Never stopped to bend or bow, sir, then I knew there’d be a row, sir, For I made a solemn vow, sir, he should soon recross that floor, And I kicked him through the room, sir, back again toward the door, Kick’d and cuffed him, in my anger, back against my chamber-door, Then I kicked him yet once more. But this midnight bird beguiling my stirr’d spirit into smiling, By the wretched, rabid, ravenous look his hungry visage wore, “Tho’,” I said, “thou art a freedman, thou hast gone so much to seed, man, So I’ll give you one good feed, man, as you seem to be so poor―― One good feed in your sore need, man, as you seem so very poor; The eggs and meat _shall_ be my treat, if with light work you’ll pay the score.” Quoth the nigger――“Work no more.” Much I marvelled this ungainly nigger should refuse so plainly Just to do a little work, for food he craved and needed sore, For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Should decline to labour seeing that he was so deuced poor; Should refuse to earn a dinner, which he hungered for I’m sure, And would have damned his soul by stealing had he hoped to make the door; Escaping thence to――work no more. Awhile I sat absorbed in musing, what meant he by this refusing, Till, mad, I turned into abusing the odious, odorous blackamoor. “Sure,” said I, “you must be crazy, to be so infernal lazy, So cussedly, outrageous lazy, as to want to work no more; You ugly, grim, ungainly, ghastly, heathen, savage blackamoor, Will you even work for wages――food and clothes and payment sure?” Quoth the nigger――“Work no more.”