"
"The devil!" returned the sheriff, with a sneering laugh, "if they
were all like him, a white man couldn't live in the country. They'd
be so damned sassy and important that we'd have to kill the last
one of 'em to have any peace."
"Fie, sheriff," laughed the chairman good-naturedly; "you seem to
be vexed at the poor fellow for his thrift, and because he is doing
well."
"I am a white man, sir; and I don't like to see niggers gittin'
above us. Them's my sentiments," was the reply. "And that's the
way our people feel."
There was a half-suppressed murmur of applause among the group of
white men at this. The chairman responded,
"No doubt, and yet I believe you are wrong. Now, I can't help
liking the fellow for his sturdy manhood. He may be a trifle too
positive, but it is a good fault. I think he has the elements of
a good citizen, and I can't understand why you feel so toward him."
There were some appreciative and good-natured cries of "Dar now,"
"Listen at him," "Now you're talkin'," from the colored men at this
reply.
"Oh, that's because you're a Yankee," said the sheriff, with
commiserating scorn. "You don't think, now, that it's any harm to
talk that way before niggers and set them against the white people
either, I suppose?"
The chairman burst into a hearty laugh, as he replied,
"No, indeed, I don't. If you call that setting the blacks against
the whites, the sooner they are by the ears the better.
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