The Law of the Land by Emerson Hough (top 10 inspirational books .txt) đ
- Author: Emerson Hough
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âThe big half-white man began to preach to me, and I says to him, âBefore you go on, I just want to ask you two questions. First, how much of you is nigger, and how much is white? Second, do you want to quit running a college up North, and come down here and take hold of this plantation, and so help out three hundred fellow-citizens of yours who are a heap more interested in the nigger question than you are yourself?â I asked that fellow that. Thatâs when he shrunk some.â
Eddring smiled, but it was a serious smile, for the South has small inclination to jest over questions such as these.
âWell, about all the fellow could do was to fall back on his old song about education uplifting the race. âThatâs all right,â I said to him. âIâll pay my share of that. But weâve got to wait until your millennium comes. Itâs no use saying it has come, when it hasnât. Itâs going to take a long time before you get the real useful educating done.â
âI got riled, talking to him, and at last I called up one of my field handsâhe had ruined twenty acres of the best cotton land I hadâand I took him by the ear and pulled out a bunch of his hair. Said I to him, âSam, is your hair like mine! Would it ever get like mine?â âNo, boss,â said he, ânot in a hundred yeahs.â He laughed at me.
âThen I said to that white fellow from the North, âHow hard do you work? I want to know that.â He began to swell up a little at that. Well, I put it to him this way. Says I, âThere was a man came down through here a few years ago, and he got plumb rich. He told all these poor black people all around that for fifty cents heâd sell them a bottle of stuff that would make their hair straight like a white manâs, in lessân a month. He always put it about a month ahead, so that heâd have time to get away. Now, that hair tonic man was what I call a professional benefactor of the nigger race,â said I. âHe got paid for it, just the same as you do. And,â says I, âheâll straighten out their hair with his hair tonic just about as soon as youâll straighten out their problem with your particular kind of ointmentâ for which you are getting better paid than he did.â
âThat riled the fellow plenty, but I went on talking to him. âThe only difference between you and him,â says I to him, âis that he was whole white and was running a straight bluff, and you are part white, and are running a halfway sort of bluff. You pray to God Aâmighty so much about this that you have just about got yourself half-persuaded that youâre honest. Do you reckon that you have got God Aâmighty persuaded that way, too?â said I to him. That made an awful disturbance in the evangelizing and elevating outfit, and finally I got out of patience. Says I to them, âI donât want to forget that you are visitors at my place. You white folks can come to my table, if you want to, or you can eat with the oppressed and downtrodden out in my kitchen, if you like that better. Your fellow-citizen, with the specialty of elevating the downtrodden, canât eat at my table. After you get it fixed up the way that suits you best, and have had your dinner, I want you-all to go out and take one more look at the sassafras thatâs growing on as fine a cotton land as ever lay out of doors. If you can elevate my niggers so that theyâll work, why go ahead and do it. God knows they need it. Learn âem geometry, learn âem to write poetry, send âem to Europe to learn painting, but please put somewhere in your college a department showing how to dig up stumps and chop sassafras roots. âYouâll pardon me,â says I, âfor Iâm a plain man; but I just want to say that thatâs the kind of elevating that the black race in America needs most. But whatever you do, donât be foolish. Donât say to me that thatâs done which you and I both know ainât done.ââ
Both Eddring and Blount were silent for a time. âThose folks stayed in around our country for quite a while,â resumed Blount, âand they succeeded in stirring up the niggers to thinking that they were not getting a square deal, but ought to break into politics once more. A few of us planters got together, and we were so stirred up about it that we thought we would do something right funny. Our county election was coming on, and you know we have got about ten black voters to one white down there. Under the Constitution we couldnât elect a white man down there in a hundred yearsânot if we followed the Constitution. This time, just for a jokeâbut listenâdo you know what we did?â
âWell, itâs pretty hard to tell just what Cal Blount would do, sometimes,â said Eddring, âbut I donât doubt you did something foolish.â
âNo, we didnât. We just had a joke. We let them elect a nigger sheriff for Tullahoma County! We just âlowed weâd give âem a touch of law as a sort of object lesson to the Northern elevators. Thought weâd take a shot at the educating business ourselves. The fellowâs name is Mose Taylor, and say! heâs the tickledest nigger you ever did see! Heâs about half-white, too, and he always did want to break into politics one way or another. Now, heâs done broke in. We let him, just for a joke. Of course, when thereâs any need for a real sheriff, we white people allow that weâll have to use the old oneâ Jim Peters.â
âWell, these things arenât always just exactly the best kind of jokes,â said Eddring. âYou have been having nothing but trouble down there for a long time.â
âTrouble!â said Blount, âI should say we have. Weâve tried to keep it a white manâs country, but itâs been a fight every day of the year. Niggers stole and killed all the cattle of my neighbors down in there, and we hung two or three niggers last month for stealing cows. We put a sign on them, âYou stole a cow, cow killed you.â Youâve got to make things sort of plain, you know, to these people, soâs they can understand âem. Now, you know the trouble we had down there about that train wreck. Itâs morally sure the niggers were at the bottom of that, one way or another. That ainât all. I told you we were having a big overflow now. Well, the fact is, we found out a day or so ago that this overflow is mostly hand-made. Theyâve been cutting the leveesââ
âBlount,â said Eddring, quietly, âthatâs just why I telegraphed you to come up here. Iâve got a boy here who knows about the whole proposition. Theyâre organizing, as sure as youâre born, and theyâve got a leader. Theyâve got a Queen, they say.â
âA Queen!â snorted Blount, jumping to his feet. âQueen, eh? Well, now! you look here, if we ever do get hold of that Queen, I want to tell you, sheâll have the uneasiest head that ever did wear any kind of crown. Queen, eh!â
âAnd youâve got a nigger sheriff now! Fine machinery for the law to have in that part of the Delta just at this time, isnât it?â
âSheriff! What do we need of a sheriff, if we get down to the bottom of this devilment? We have got to put it down, and thatâs all there is to it, as you know very well. Thereâs no two ways about it. These disturbances, most of them due to politics, have upset our whole country. Now, it is for us to set it right again. Weâve got to cut politics out, and get down to common sense, down to business. The South canât wait for ever on politics, Northern or Southern. This countryâs bigger than politics, and bigger than politicians. You know we can count on every white man in my part of the Delta. Can we count on you?â
Eddring hesitated, but finally looked his friend in the face. âIâm a white man,â said he. Blount went on.
âWhat you tell me is not altogether news. Weâre going after these people, and weâre going to put an end to this thing once for all. Weâre going to have a country. Now, we want as large a number of white gentlemen as possible. We will want you.
âNow, no matter what you are doing, or where you are, will you come when I send for you!â
Eddring repeated simply, âI am a white man, too.â
âItâs for the law, Eddringâfor the country.â
âYes. I think itâs for the law.â
âCome out and eat with me, Cal,â said Eddring. âIâve some other matters to put before you. A great many things have been so confused in my mind that I have hardly known where to begin to straighten them out.â
âI reckon youâve got some new lawsuit or other on your hands,â said Blount.
âYouâre right. At least it may be a lawsuit, and it certainly bids fair to be a puzzling study, lawsuit or not.â
After they were seated at table in an adjoining cafe, Eddring tossed over to his friend a late copy of a New Orleans newspaper. âYou see that headline?â said he. âItâs all about a dancer, Miss Louise Loisson. You ever hear that name before?â
âWhy, no, I donât seem to remember it, if I ever did.â
âWell, that name is bothering me mightily just now. You know something of the history of those old Y. V. damage judgments, after I left the road?â
âYes, I reckon I heard something about it. Some one seems to have got hold of the list of claims, and pushed them for all they were worth. Of course, I know you hadnât anything to do with that.â
âIt was an odd sort of thing,â said Eddring, âand it has led up to a number of other things still more strange. Now, no one knows how that information regarding the claims got out. I told you that I found that complete list of the claims in the valise of the mysterious man, Mr. Thompson, who was killed in the train wreck at your place. Of course I turned over all this material to the company at once. But there must have been a duplicate list out somewhere. I had my own suspicions. I knew, or thought I knew, why the dogs ran that trail right up to your house. Hereâs one reason I
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