But anon he begun agin: “I am sick on’t. I believe more’n half the talk is for effect. I don’t believe the South is a bleedin’; I hain’t seen no blood. I don’t believe the niggers are a rizen, I hain’t seen ’em a gettin’ up. I believe it is all folderol.” And then I sez, a lookin’ up from my knittin’ work: “Be mejum, Josiah Allen; you don’t live there. You hain’t so good a judge as if you lived in the South; you hain’t so good a judge as John Richard is, for he has lived right there.” And he snapped out real snappish: “Wall, there is lots of places I never lived in, hain’t there? But anybody can know sunthin’, whether they live anywhere or not.” But I kep’ on real mejum and a talkin’ deep reason, I know well. “When anybody is a passin’ through deep waters, Josiah Allen, they can feel the cold waves and the chill as nobody can who is on dry land.” And then Josiah said them inflammatory words agin that he had hurled at the head of John Richard, and that had gaulded him so. He sez in a loud, defiant axent, “Oh shaw!” And I sez, “You hain’t there, Josiah Allen, and you hain’t so well qualified to shaw, and shaw accordin’ to principle, as if you wuz there.” “Wall, I say, and contend for it,” sez he, almost hotly, “that there is too much dumb talk. Why don’t the niggers behave themselves, and why don’t the Southerners treat ’em as I treat Ury? [Illustration] “Ury has worked for me upwards of seven years, and he hain’t riz, has he? And I hain’t been a howlin’ at him, and a whippin’ him, and a shootin’ at him, and a ridin’ him out on a rail, and a burnin’ him to the stake if he wouldn’t vote me in President; and he hain’t been a massecreein’ us, not that I have ever hearn on, or a rapinin’ round, and I hain’t rapined Philury, have I? “If there is any truth in these stories, why don’t the South foller on and do as I do? That would end their troubles to once. “Let the Southerners act as I do, and the niggers act like Ury, and that would end up the Race Problem pretty sudden.” Sez I, in pretty lofty axents, for I begun to feel eloquent and by the side of myself, “How many generations has it took to make you honest and considerate, and Ury faithful and patient? How long has it took, Josiah Allen?” “Why, about seven years or thereabouts. He come in the middle of winter, and now it is spring.” Sez I, “It has took hundreds and hundreds of years, Josiah Allen.” And I went on more noble and deep: “Ury’s parents and grandparents, and back as fur as he knows, wuz good, hard-workin’, honest men—so wuz yours. You are both the children of freedom and liberty. You haven’t been saddled with a burden of ignorance and moral and physical helplessness and want. He has no lurid background of abuse and wrongs and arrogance to inflame his fevered fancies.