“Somebody hold me! Quick! Somebody muzzle me! Somebody better put my chains on to me again! Somebody better tell that coloured man to clear out of here! I've been trained to chase coloured men! What do they mean by letting that coloured man get near my show tent?” Old Uncle Zeb, he is the quietest and most peaceable person anywhere, amongst dogs, boys, or humans, and the janitor of the Baptist church. He is the only coloured man in our town, and is naturally looked up to and respected with a good deal of admiration and curiosity on that account, and also because he is two hundred years old. He used to be the bodyservant of General George Washington, he says, until General Washington set him free. And then along comes Abraham Lincoln after a while and sets him free again, he says. And being set free by two prominent men like that, Uncle Zeb figures he is freer than anybody else, and I have heard him tell, time and again, how he can't speak kindly enough of them two white gentlemen. “Don't anybody sick me on to that coloured man,” says this bloodhound dog. “If I was to be sicked on to that coloured man, this whole town couldn't pull me off again! I been trained to it, I tell you!” Which it was easy enough to see he really didn't want to start anything; it was just his pride and haughtiness working in him. Just then Freckles Watson, who is my boy that I own, and Tom Mulligan, who is Mutt Mulligan's boy, both says: “Sick 'im!” Not that they understood what us dogs was talking about, but they saw me and Mutt sidling around that Tom-show dog, and it looked to them like a fight could be commenced. But the Tom-show dog, when he heard that “Sick 'im!” jumped and caught Uncle Zeb by a leg of his trousers. Then Uncle Zeb's own dog, which his name is Burning Deck after a piece Uncle Zeb heard recited one time, comes a-bulging and a-bouncing through the crowd and grabs that Tom-show dog by the neck. They rolled over and over, and into the eating tent, and under the table. The actors jumped up, and the table got tipped over, and the whole meal and the tin dishes they was eating off of and all the actors and the benches and the dogs was wallowing and banging and kicking and barking and shouting on the ground in a mess, and all of us other dogs run in to help Burning Deck lick that bloodhound, and all the boys followed their dogs in to see a square deal, and then that tent come down on top of everything, and believe me it was some enjoyable time. And I found quite a sizeable piece of meat under there in the mix-up, and I thinks to myself I better eat that while I can get it, so I crawled out with it. Outside is sitting Uncle Zeb, watching that fallen-down tent heaving and twisting and squirming, and I heard him say to himself: “White folks is allers gittin' up some kin' of entuh-tainment fo' us cullud people to look at! Us cullud people suah does git treated fine in dese heah Nothe'n towns!”