Why, for a time after I first went South things looked so new and strange to me, and my daughter Maggie wuz so firm in her belief, that I seemed to think jest as she did, and we would talk for hours and hours, and agree jest as well as two human creeters could agree. And I guess I even outdone her in drawin’ metafors, and drawin’ ’em to great distances, as my way is. For I am always one to speak out and tell how things look to me to-day; if they look different to-morrow under the light of some different knowledge, why, then I’ll speak out agin and tell that when the time comes. And some of these beliefs Maggie and I promulgated to each other, I believe now jest as strong as I did then, and some of my idees got sort o’ modified down in the course of time. Of this more and anon. But then Maggie would talk to me, and I’d say to Maggie: Why, lettin’ such ignorant and onexperienced men rule the country, rule free, educated, cultured men and wimmen, is as foolish as it would be to put a blind man onto a wild, onbroke horse, and tell him to guide it safe when it wuz led right along by pits, and canyons, and kasems, and helpless ones and infants are layin’ right in its path, and lots of mean, ugly creeters ready to ketch holt of the bits and back him off out of their way. Why, that blind man couldn’t do it. Why? because he hain’t got any eyes, that is why. He don’t know which line to pull on, for he hain’t got no eyes to see which way the danger lays, nor which side on him folks are a layin’ in his track. He hain’t to blame, that blind man hain’t, nor the horse hain’t to blame, nor the helpless ones he is a tromplin’ over and a stompin’ and a kickin’. “Who is to blame?” Why, the ones that lifted him onto the horse. Wall, say some, the blind man wuz lifted onto the horse in the first place to get him out of danger; he wuz jest on the pint of sinkin’ down into the deep mud and quicksand; he wuz lifted onto the horse as a war measure, a way of safety to him out of his danger. Wall, I sez, that wuz all right; I presume they thought the horse could bear him out safely amongst the pitfalls a layin’ on every side of him, and I dare presume to say they didn’t realize that the man wuz so blind, or that so many wuz goin’ to be trompled on by the heels of the horse. But now, I say, they have gin it a fair trial, they see it didn’t work; they see that a blind man can’t ride a wild horse over a dangerous road with safety to himself, or the horse, or the helpless ones in his way. “Wall, what will you do?” you say.