He looked bold, and brassy, and self-assertive, and dissipated—he looked right down mean. And I should have said so if I hadn’t never hearn a word about his treatment of Victor, or his deviltry about Hester, or anything. You know in some foreign countries the officers have to give you a passport to pass through the country. And when you are a travellin’ you have to show your papers, and show up who you be and what you be. Wall, I spoze that custom is follered from one of Nater’s. She always fills out her papers and signs ’em with her own hand, so that folks that watch can tell travellers a passin’ through this world. Nater had signed Col. Seybert’s passport, had writ it down in the gross, sensual, yet sneerin’ lips, in the cold, cruel look in his eyes, in his loud, boastin’, aggressive manner. Yet he wuz a neighbor, and I felt that we must neighbor with him. After I come into the room, he begun, I spoze out of politeness, to sort o’ address himself to me in his remarks. And he seemed to be a resoomin’ the conversation my comin’ in had interrupted. And anon, he begun to went on about the colored people perfectly shameful. And as my mind roamed back and recalled the various things I had heard of his doin’, I most imegiatly made up my mind that, neighbor or not, if this thing kep’ on I should have to gin him a piece of my mind. [Illustration: POOR WHITE.] And there Genieve sot, the good, pretty, patient creeter, a hearin’ her own people run down to the lowest notch. I felt as if I should sink, but felt that before I _did_ sink I should speak. He went on to tell what a dretful state the country wuz in, and all a owin’ to the colored race; and sez he: “The niggers don’t take any interest in the welfare of the country. What do they care what becomes of the nation if they can get their pan of bacon and hominy? “A mule stands up before their eyes higher than any idea of Justice or Liberty. “They are liars, they are thieves, they are lazy, they are hangers-on to the skirts of civilization, they can never stand upright, they have got to be carried all their days. And it is this mass of ignorance, and superstition, and vice that you Northerners want to see ruling us white men of the South. “They can’t read nor write, nor understand an intelligible remark hardly; and yet these are the men that you want to have vote and get put in as rulers over us. “Well, we will not submit to it, that is all there is about it; and if war comes, the sooner the better, for we will die fighting for our freedom. It is bad enough for us Southerners to be ruled by Northern men, but when it comes to being ruled by beasts, animals that are no higher than brutes, we will not submit.” Sez I, for I would speak up, and I did: “Hain’t there plenty of intelligent educated colored people now, graduates of schools and colleges—lawyers, teachers, ministers, etc., etc.?” “Oh, yes, a few,” he admitted reluctantly.