“Oh,silkroad power leveling, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there
from Ohio–a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see,
too,sro gold, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he
had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver- headed cane–the awfulest old gray-headed
nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could
talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could
VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It
was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but
when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out.
I says I’ll never vote agin. Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may
rot for all me –I’ll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger–why,
he wouldn’t a give me the road if I hadn’t shoved him out o’ the way. I says to the people, why ain’t
this nigger put up at auction and sold?–that’s what I want to know. And what do you reckon they
said? Why, they said he couldn’t be sold till he’d been in the State six months, and he hadn’t been
there that long yet. There, now–that’s a specimen. They call that a govment that can’t sell a free
nigger till he’s been in the State six months. Here’s a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets
on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet’s got to set stock-still for six whole months
before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and–”
Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went
head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all
the hottest kind of language–mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub
some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and
then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left
foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it warn’t good judgment, because that
was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a
howl that fairly made a body’s hair raise, and down he went in the dirt,cheap maple mesos, and rolled there,maple story mesos, and held
his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. He said so his
own self afterwards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over
him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.
After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one
delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour,
and then I would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or t’other. He drank and drank, and tumbled
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