But I knew it; and all the while he went on a talkin’ about “the ignorance and wastefulness and shiftlessness of this class of boys, and how impossible it wuz to manage ’em and keep ’em down in their places; how you had to set down on ’em and set heavy if you didn’t want to be bairded to your face and run over by ’em; how if you give ’em an inch they would take a ell, and destroy and waste more than their necks wuz worth,” etc., etc., etc.— All the while he wuz a goin’ on and a sayin’ all this I kep’ up a thinkin’, for I knew that Zekiel was a middlin’ good boy, and had been misused by the Deacon, so I had hearn—had been worked beyend his strength, and whipped, and didn’t get enough to eat, so the boy said. The Deacon had took him for his board and clothes; but his board wuz hard indeed, and very knotty, and his clothes wuz very light, very. And so, bein’, as I spoze, sort o’ drove to it, he riz. And as I say, the Deacon was madder than any hen I ever see, wet or dry. “The idee,” sez he, “of that boy, that I have took care on ever sence he wuz a child, took care on him in health, and nussed him, and doctored him when he wuz sick” (lobelia and a little catnip wuz every mite of medicine he ever give him, and a little paregoric, so I have been _told_)—“the idee of that boy a leavin’ me—a rizin’ up and a sayin’ as pert as a piper, ‘If you don’t want to hire me, let me go.’” “Wall, which did you do, Deacon?” sez I. “Why, I hired the dumb upstart! I couldn’t get along without his work, and he knew it.” “‘The laborer,’ Deacon Henzy,” sez I, solemn, “‘is worthy of his hire.’” “Wall, didn’t I lay out to pay him? I laid out this very fall to get him a pair of pantaloons and a vest and a cravat. I laid out to pay him richly. And he had better a trusted to me, who have been a perfect father and gardeen to him, than to have riz up and demanded his pay. But,” sez he, “there is no use of talkin’ about it now, it only excites me and onmans me, and I come in merely to borry a augur and have a little neighborly visit.” And then wantin’, I spoze, to take his mind offen his own troubles, he sort o’ launched off agin onto his favorite theme of runnin’ down the Southerners. “The Southern people,” sez he, “are a mass of overbearin’, tyrannical slave-drivers, selfish, without principles or consciences, crackin’ their whips over the blacks, drivin’ ’em to work, refusin’ ’em any justice.” “Why,” sez I, “the slaves are liberated, Deacon Henzy.” “Wall, why be they?” sez he. “It wuzn’t from any good will on the part of the bloated aristocracy of the South. They liberated ’em because they _had_ to. Why didn’t they free ’em because it wuz right to free ’em? because it wuz right and just to the slaves? because it wuz a wicked sin that cried up to the heavens to make ’em labor, and not pay ’em for it?” Why, he went on in fearful axents of wrath and skorn about it, and finally bein’ so wrought up, he said, “that them that upholded ’em wuz as bad as they wuz.”