bit of it; you would reject it if it were not forced upon you. While you sneer at and slander the negro for accepting his freedom, you go down in the dirt and lick the heels of the men who trample on you, and tell you that labor degrades you, and then straighten yourselves up and judge of the right of a class of men to vote by the color of their skin, as if that were the only thing in which your claim to the right of suffrage would bear competition with theirs.”
The Captain had been interrupted two or three times, and a large crowd had gathered around him. He was about offering his fruit for sale again, when some one asked, “How about the man on the steamboat?” “Well,” said he, “before I was fairly fastened to the wharf two men came on board and asked to be shown ‘where I had put those colored men ?’ ‘What colored men?’ I replied. ‘The niggers,’ said one, ‘that you brought from Cleveland.’ ‘There were no such men on this vessel when I left Cleveland,’ I replied. ‘I saw them,’ he said, ‘from the steamer when we passed you, and I shall search the vessel.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘search it if you want to, you will find no such men on this craft.’
“However, I thought, as a little excitement would be rather pleasant just then, I would tell him all about it, withholding the account of how they came on board, and I did tell him, not forgetting their conduct when they found they were free. The man turned pale, trembled, grated his teeth, walked up and down the deck, and finally having recovered his voice,—he was so mad at first he could not speak—he shook his fist at me, keeping, however, at safe distance, and said, with horrid oaths, ‘You shall suffer for this!’ I said, ‘Sir, it is not proper to speak in that manner to a Captain on his own ship.’ He appeared to understand me, and left the vessel. I never heard from him again ”
