And so Josiah went on a runnin’ John Richard’s work and belief down to the lowest notch; and I wuz glad enough when Deacon Henzy come in on a errant, for I wuz indeed in hopes that this would change the subject. But my hopes, as all earthly expectations are liable to be, wuz blasted. For Josiah went right on with his inflamed speeches and his unbelief about any danger a threatenin’ the nation from the South. And I truly found myself in the condition of the one mentioned in Scripture (only different sex and circumstances), where it sez the last state of that man wuz worse than the first. For while my pardner’s talk had consisted mostly of the sin of unbelief, Deacon Henzy’s remarks wuz full of a bitter hatred and horstility towards the ex-slaveholders of the Southern States. He truly had no bowels of compassion for ’em, not one. He come from radical abolitionist stock on both sides, and wuz brung up under the constant throwin’ of stuns, throwed by parents and grandparents at them they considered greater sinners than themselves. And Deacon Henzy had gathered up them stuns and set ’em in a settin’ of personal obstinacy and bigotry, and wore ’em for a breastplate. And hard it wuz to hit any soft place under them rocky layers of prejudices inherited and acquired. And he and his folks before him didn’t know what the word mejum wuz, not by personal experience. It needed only a word to set him off. Josiah spoke that word, and the wheel begun to turn and grind out denunciations of the Southerners as a class and as a people. Oh, how he rolled out big-soundin’ terms of scathin’ reproaches and burnin’ rebukes, and the horrible wickedness of one human bein’ enslavin’ another one and enrichin’ himself on the unpaid labor of a brother man! Why, it wuz fairly skairful to hear him go on, fur skairfuller than Josiah’s talk. He had always talked rampant on the subject I knew, but as rampant as he had always been he wuz now fur rampanter than I had ever known him to be. But as I found out most imegiatly, he wuz agitated and excited on this occasion almost more than he could bear, when he first come in. For he soon went on and told us all about it. A boy he had took—Zekiel Place by name—had run away and left him; or, that is, he had made all his preparations to go when the Deacon found it out, and the boy give him the chance of lettin’ him go or keepin’ him and payin’ him wages for his work. Now, Deacon Henzy, like so many other human creeters, wuz so intent on findin’ out and stunin’ other folks’es faults, that he didn’t have time to set down and find out about his own sins and stun himself, so to speak. He never had thought, so I spoze, what a hard master he wuz, and how he had treated Zekiel Place.