BRIGHTLY. Myers, you should have chosen the law instead of Faro and speckelatin in niggers. MYERS. Why? BRIGHTLY. You got so much cheek, and you can twist a lie so it will look like a fact. MYERS. Now don’t insult me! BRIGHTLY. Oh, get out! You are as sensitive as a Yankee nigger stealer. (_Enter D’Arneaux R._) D’A. Good morning, gentlemen. Brightly, please say to my mother, pressing business calls me to Charleston, at once. BRIGHTLY. The devil! What is up now? D’A. The last dispatches announce that the bombardment of Sumter has commenced. BRIGHTLY. Jest as I expected. D’A. I enter the army tonight, Capt. Hood, may I expect to enter under your command? HOOD. Sorry, but my company is full. Everything is full. BRIGHTLY. Why not stick to the Regulators? You got a commission there? D’A. Then I will return to Creelsboro tonight, take leave of my mother in the morning, then hie for the frontier. BRIGHTLY. What’s your rush? I can’t get ready as soon as that! D’A. The state owns the right to my head and arm now. A quick blow, and an honorable, bloodless peace. HOOD. Well said, my boy. We fight our own countrymen, whose ancestors stood shoulder to shoulder with ours for the first independence. The first shot makes me shudder, for I cannot see the end. D’A. War is cruel, and I have hoped against hope that it would not come. HOOD. I like your sentiments, my boy. May I hope a bullet may never find you. But the north will fight. It is the exasperation wrought by cruel pictures of the wrong we have carried as best we could, through the first century of the Republic. BRIGHTLY. Now, gentlemen, don’t get melancholy. Yankees won’t fight. They are by instinct thieves and shopkeepers. I will bet you my best nigger you can’t hire one to cross the line. MYERS. I have travelled in that country some, and I will meet your wager and go you one better, that you smell as much Yankee gunpowder the next year as you can take care of. BRIGHTLY. (_Pointing to Myers, laughing._) It’s chronic, Johnny Bull! HOOD. Did I understand you that you are an Englishman? MYERS. An Australian, sir, on a spec, plying between Mobile and Havana. Got anything to sell? HOOD. Your line of trade? MYERS. I prefer handsome women. D’A. And when he is tired of them, they are turned over to another master in the auction yards of Havana. MYERS. Exactly. I made $700 on the last one. HOOD. It remains for Old and New England to furnish the men, that have loaded the south with its most ignominious reputation. (_Myers springs to his feet._) MYERS. Do you insult the legitimate business of your country? HOOD. The absolute freedom the Republic confers upon you has never legalized a crime against humanity. MYERS. What say you, sir? HOOD. When this country opens its doors to the citizens of another state, it expects no insults to its hospitality! MYERS. Do you fight, sir? HOOD. I do, sir, most assuredly. D’A. You can take your choice, sir.