“But you found it wuz your bizness before you got through with it—you lost Ury’s help six weeks in your hurryenst time, when he wuz away to the lawsuit, etc., etc. And it made Philury sick, and you and I had to be up with her more or less, and you took cold there one night, and had a sickness that lasted you for weeks and almost killed you; and if you _had_ died,” sez I in deep tones of affection and pathos, “if you _had_ left your devoted pardner forever, could you have looked me in the face and said that this trouble of theirs wuzn’t nuthin’ that affected us? No; when a black cloud comes up the sky you can’t tell where the lightnin’ is a goin’ to hit—whether it will strike saint or sinner.” I see he wuz affected by my tender and eloquent allusion to his passin’ away; for a moment he looked softened and almost as if he wuz a goin’ to lay down the argument somewhere and leave it there. But anon his linement clouded up, and he assumed the expression of doggy obstinacy his sect knows so well how to assume, and sez he: “But this is sunthin’ entirely different. There hain’t no earthly possibility that this nigger question can affect us one way or another; there hain’t no way for it to,” sez he. Sez I, “Hain’t you got a heart, Josiah Allen, to help others who are in trouble and jeopardy, and don’t know which way to turn to get the right help?” “I have got a heart to help Number One—to help Josiah Allen—and I have got a heart to mind my own bizness, and I am a goin’ to.” And he passed over his cup agin for the third cup of coffee. That man drinks too much coffee—it hain’t good for him; but I can’t help it; and my coffee _is_ delicious anyway, and the cream is thick and sweet, and he loves it _too_ well, as I say; but as good as it wuz, it couldn’t draw his mind from his own idees. Sez he agin, in louder axents and more decideder ones: “There hain’t no possible way that we can be affected by the Race Problem one way or another.” And I begun to feel myself a growin’ real eloquent. I don’t love to get so eloquent that time of the day, but mebby it wuz the effect of that gauldin’ tone of hisen. Anyway, I sez: “It is impossible to guard one’s self aginst the effects of a mighty wrong. “The links that weld humanity together are such curius ones, wove out of so many strands, visible and invisible, strong as steel and relentless as death, and that reach out so fur, so fur on every side, how can any one tell whether a great strain and voyalence inflicted on the lowest link of that chain may not shatter and corrode and destroy the very highest and brightest one? “The hull chain of humanity is held in one hand, and we are bein’ pulled along by that mighty, inexorable hand into we know not what. “The link that shines the brightest to-day may be rusty to-morrow, the strongest one may be torn in pieces by some sudden and voyalent wrench, or some slow, wearin’ strain comin’ from beneath.