“It all kum ter me last night, Mr. Vance! Now I remember whar ’t was I met yer. But fust lem me tell yer who an’ what I be. My name’s Quattles. I was born in South Kerliny, not fur from Columby. I was what the niggers call a _mean white_, and my father he was a mean white afore me, and all my brothers they was mean whites, and my sisters they mahrrid mean whites. The one thing we was raised ter do fiust-rate, and what we tuk ter kindly from the start, was ter shirk labor. We was taught ’t was degradin’ ter do useful work like a nigger does, so we all tried hard ter find su’thin’ that mowt be easy an’ not useful.” “My dear fellow,” interrupted Vance, who saw the man was suffering, “you’re fatiguing yourself too much. Rest awhile.” “No, Mr. Vance. You musn’t mind these twitchin’s an’ spazums like. They airn’t quite as bahd as they look. Wall, as I war sayin’, one cuss of slavery ar’, it drives the poor whites away from honest labor; makes ’em think it’s mean-sperretid ter hoe corn an’ plant ’taters. An’ this feelin’, yer see, ar’ all ter the profit uv the rich men,—the Hammonds, Rhetts, an’ Draytons,—’cause why? ’cause it leaves ter the rich all the good land, an’ drives the poor whites ter pickin’ up a mean livin’, any way they kin, outside uv hard work! Howsomever, I didn’t see this; an’ so, like other mis’rable fools, I thowt I war a sort uv a ’ristocrat myself, ’cause I could put on airs afore a nigger. An’ this feelin’ the slave-owners try to keep up in the mean whites; try to make ’em feel proud they’re not niggers, though the hull time the poor cusses fare wuss nor any nigger in a rice-swamp.” “My friend,” said Vance, “you’ve got at the truth at last, though I fear you’ve been long about it.” “Yer may bet high on that, Mr. Vance! How I used ter cuss the Abolishuners, an’ go ravin’ mahd over the meddlin’ Yankees! Wall, what d’yer think war the best thing South Kerliny could do fur me, after never off’rin’ me a chance ter larn ter read an’ write? I’ll tell yer what the _peculiar_ prermoted me ter. I riz to be foreman uv of a rat-pit.” “Of a _what_?” interrogated Vance. “Of a rat-pit. There war a feller in Charleston who kept a rat-pit, whar a little tareyer dog killed rats, so many a minute, to please the sportin’ gentry an’ other swells. Price uv admission one dollar. The swells would come an’ bet how many rats the dog would kill in a minute,—’t was sometimes thirty, sometimes forty, and wunst ’t was fifty. My bus’ness was ter throw the rats, one after another, inter the pit. We’d a big cage with a hole in the top, an’ I had ter put my bar hand in, an’ throw out the rats fast as I could, one by one. The tareyer would spring an’ break the backs uv the varmints with one jerk uv his teeth. Great bus’ness fur a white man,—warn’t it? So much more genteel than plantin’ an’ hoein’! Wall, I kept at that pleasant trade five yars, an’ then lost my place ’cause both hands got so badly bit I couldn’t pull out the rats no longer.”