So when this unknown man, with his young legs and his old face, asked
me, on one minute's acquaintance, to smoke, I accepted at once.
"I am right about it, my dear sir," he continued, biting off the end of
a cigar and sharing with me the lighted match. "The negro is infinitely
worse off than in the slave days. We never had to hang any one of them
then to make the others behave themselves."
"How do you account for it?" I asked, settling myself in my chair. (We
were alone in the smoking compartment.)
"Account for what?"
"The change that has come over the South--to the negro," I answered.
"The negro has become a competitor, sir. The interests of the black man
and the white man now lie apart. Once the white man was his friend; now
he is his rival."
His eyes were boring into mine; his teeth set tight.
The doctrine was new to me, but I did not interrupt him.
"It wasn't so in the old days. We shared what we had with them.
One-third of the cabins of the South were filled with the old and
helpless.
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