"Yes," says Phipps, "the niggers are thick, thundering thick--never saw 'em so thick in my life. _Ain't they thick?_" he soliloquized, and as he continued his stroll in the purlieus of "slightly soiled" garments, vulgarly known as second-hand shops, mostly proprietorized by very dignified and respectable _col'ud pussons_, it again struck Phipps quite forcibly that the niggers were _a_ getting thick. "Godfree! but ain't they thick! I hope to be stabbed with a gridiron," said Phipps, "if there ain't more _niggers_--look at 'em--more niggers than would patch and grade the infernal regions eleven miles! Guess I've enough niggers for a spell," continued Phipps, "so I'll just pop in here, and see how this feller sells his notions." And so Abner, having reached Dock square, saunters into a gun, pistol, bowie, jack-knife, dog-collar, shot-bag, and notion-shop in general. Unlucky step. The stiff-dickied, frizzle-headed, polished and perfumed shop-keeper was on hand, and particularly predisposed to sell the stranger something. Just then a nigger passed the door, and looked in very sharply at Phipps, and presently two more passed, then a fourth and fifth, all _looking_ more or less pointedly at the manufacturer of wooden doin's, and white-pine fixin's. "That's a neat _collar_," says the shop-keeper, as Phipps, sort of miscellaneously, placed his hand upon a brass-band, red-lined dog-collar. "Collar! don't call that a _collar_, do you?" "I do, sir, a beautiful collar, sir." "What for, _solgers_?" asks Phipps. "Soldiers, no, dogs," says the shop-keeper, puckering his mouth as though he had _sampled_ a lemon. "_O!_" says Phipps, suddenly realizing the fact. "I ain't got no dogs; bad stock; don't pay; tax 'em up where I live; wouldn't pay tax for forty dogs." More niggers passed, repassed, and looked in at Phipps and the storekeeper. "I say, ain't the niggers got to be thick--infernal thick, in your town lately?" "Well, I don't know that they are," replied the shop-keeper; "getting rather scarce, I think, since the Fugitive bill has been put in force over the country, sir, but it does appear to me," said the shop-keeper, twiging sundry and suspicious-looking col'ud gem'en passing by his store, gaping in rather wistfully at the door, and peeping through the sash of the windows--"it does appear to me, that a good many colored persons are about this morning; yes, there is, why there goes more, more yet; bless me, there's another, two, three, four, why a dozen has just passed; they seem to look in here rather curiously, I wonder--only look; what has stirred them up, I want to know!" the fluctuation of the _Congo_ market completely attracted the handsome man's attention; his surprise finally assumed the most tangible shape and complexion of fear, for the niggers, one and all, looked savage as meat-axes, and began to get too numerous to mention.