“What dat? Mas’ Jo’s son! MAS’ JO’S SON!! MY MAS’ JO’S SON!!! Lem me shake han’s wid you, mastah. Jes’ to think! MAS’ JO’S SON! An’ Phil done live to shake han’s wid mas’ Jo’s son. Why, my young mastah, I done raise your father! Him an’ me done play ma’bles togeder many and many a time. We was boys togeder right heah, on dis very identumcal plauntation. Used to go in swimmin’ togeder, an’ go fishin’ an’ steal de mules out’n de stables Sundays, an’ ride races wid ’em and git cotched, too, sometimes when ole mastah git home from chu’ch. MY MASTAH. But Ise glad to see yer.” All this while the great giant was wrenching my hand well-nigh off, laughing and weeping alternately, and stamping with a delight which could find no other vent than in physical exertion. I was naturally anxious to divert the conversation into some other and less personal channel, and managed to do so presently by asking Phil to give me a specimen of his hog-calling cry, which I wished to hear near at hand. That performance over, we talked again. I began by saying I had never heard any one call hogs in that way before. “Dat’s jes’ it, mastah,” he replied. “Folks don’t understan’ de _science_ o’ hog-callin’. Dey says ‘p-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-r’og,’ when de hogs ain’t po’ at all, but fat as buttah. Dey got to git ‘hog’ in some ways so dey thinks. But dey ain’t no sense in dat. Hogs don’t understan’ dat. Dey can’t talk an’ don’t understan’ de meanin’ o’ talk words. You mus’ jes’ let ’em know dat when you wants ’em to come youse gwine to make a noise, de like o’ which ain’t in heaven or yuth. Den dey gits to knowin’ what dat means. Dat’s my way. When I fetch a yell at ’em, dey jes’ raise der yeahs, an’ say to der se’f: ‘Dat dar’s Phil, fo’ sho’, an’ Phil’s de big, ugly, black nigga wid de bauskets o’ cawn.’ When you says ‘Phil,’ you mean mastah’s big nigga what wuks in de fiel’, an’ plays de banjo, an’ goes fishin’; but when de hogs says ‘Phil,’ dey mean a big black fella, wid a big yell into him, _an’_ de bauskets o’ cawn. An’ you bettah b’lieve dat makes ’em jump up an’ clap dey han’s fo’ joy, jes’ like de nigga does when he gets religion ’nuff to make him shout, an’ _not_ ’nuff to keep him offen the hen roos’s. If a nigga gits ’nuff religion to keep him from stealin’, it’s a mistake. Dey don’t never mean to do it, and when dey does, dey ain’t glad a bit, an’ dey hurries up an’ sends de surplage back.” Phil’s respect for what he called “niggas” was exceedingly small, and it was his greatest pleasure in life to demonstrate their inferiority and emphasize their shortcomings in a hundred ways.