"I don't know as you'd like it; but if any one who has been kept
down and put on, as poor men are at the South, can muster pluck
enough to get away and come here, he'll think he's been born over
again, or I'm mistaken. Nobody asks your politics. I don't reckon
anybody knew mine for a year. The fact is, we're all too busy to
fuss with our neighbors or cuss them about their opinions. I've
heard more politics in a country store in Horsford in a day than
I've heard here in Eupolia in a year--and we've got ten thousand
people here, too. I moved here last year, and am doing well. I
wouldn't go back and live in that d--d hornet's nest that I felt
so bad about leaving--not for the whole State, with a slice of the
next one throwed in.
"I've meant to tell you, a half dozen times, about that little
Yankee gal that used to be at Red Wing; but I've been half afraid
to, for fear you would get mad about it. My wife said that when she
came away there was a heap of talk about you being sorter 'sweet'
on the 'nigger-school-marm.' I knew that she was sick at your house
when I was there, and so, putting the two together, I 'llowed that
for once there might be some truth in a Horsford rumor. I reckon it
must have been a lie, though; or else she 'kicked' you, which she
wouldn't stand a speck about doing, even if you were the President,
if you didn't come up to her notion.
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