I seen now the kind of conversations he is always
having with himself when he gets jest so drunk
and is thinking hard. Only this time it happens
to be out loud.
"What is a gentleman?" I asts him, thinking
if he wasn't one it might take his mind off himself a
little to tell me. "What MAKES one?"
"Authorities differ," says Doctor Kirby, slouching
down in his chair, and grinning like he knowed a
joke he wasn't going to tell no one. "I heard
Doctor Jackson describe himself that way the other
day."
Well, speaking personal, I never had smelled
none of roses. I wasn't nothing but trash myself,
so being a gentleman didn't bother me one way or
the other. The only reason I didn't want to see
them niggers bunked so very bad was only jest
because it was such a low-down, ornery kind of
trick.
"It ain't too late," I says, "to pull out of this
nigger scheme yet and get into something more
honest."
"I don't know," he says thoughtful. "I think
perhaps it IS too late." And he sets there looking
like a man that is going over a good many years
of life in his mind. Purty soon he says:
"As far as honesty goes--it isn't that so much,
O Daniel-come-to-judgment! It's about as honest
as most medicine games. It's--" He stopped
and frowned agin.
"What is it?"
"It's their being NIGGERS," he says.
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