And as I hearn him talk, I seemed to be riz up more and more, and able
to see further than I had seen, and I felt a feelin’ that Victor wuz in
the right on’t. I thought back on how eloquent Maggie and I had growed
on the race question, and I felt that I wouldn’t take it back. No; I
had spoke my mind as things seemed to me then, and if the two races
wuz goin’ to be sot down together side by side, I felt that the idees
we had promulgated to each other wuz right idees; but the more Victor
talked the more I felt that his idees wuz right to separate the two
races, if it wuz possible to do it.
His talk made a deep impression onto me, and I went on in my mind and
drew some metafors further, it seemed to me, than I had ever drawed
any, and eppisoded to myself more eloquent than I had ever eppisoded.
I hain’t one to go half way into any undertakin’, and I made up my mind
then and there that if Victor and Genieve married and sot off for this
colony in Africa, that I would set ’em out with a bushel of my best
dried apples, and mebby more. And some dried peaches, and a dozen of
them pans—I thought they would come handy in Africa to ketch cocoanut
milk, or sunthin’.
And I said I would give ’em a couple of hens in welcome, and a male hen
and a pair of ducks, if he spozed he would get water enough to keep ’em
contented. Somehow I kep’ thinkin’ of the Desert of Sarah—I couldn’t
seem to keep Sarah out of my mind.
But he said there wuz plenty of water where they wuz goin’. And he sot
and promulgated his idees to me for some time. And I looked on him with
admiration and a considerable amount of deep respect.
He wuz a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome fellow, with very courteous,
winnin’ manners.
He had a clear-cut, resolute face, and silky brown hair that fell down
over a broad white forwerd, and a mustache of the same color.
His eyes would fairly melt sometimes, and be soft as a woman’s, and
then agin they would look you through and through and seem to be
piercin’ through the hull dark path ahead out into the light of safety.
And his lips, that wuz resolute and firm enough sometimes, could anon,
or oftener, grow tremulous with feelin’ and eloquence.
He wuz a earnest Christian, a professor of religion, and, what is fur
better, a practicer of the same.
He give his idees to me in full that day in confidence (and a desire to
linger till Genieve got back).
Some of these idees he got from Genieve, some on ’em he learned from
books, and kindred minds, and close observation, and remembrance of
talks he had hearn when such things sunk deep in his heart, and some on
’em sprung up from seeds God had planted in his soul, onbeknown to him;
in a woman we call it intuition.
But anyway, no matter by what name we call these seeds, they lay in the
soul till the Sun of Occasion warms ’em into life, and then they open
their star flowers and find the way to the Right and the True.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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