In fact, pilot," he said in a
joking manner, "they're rather cumbersome little bits for a feller's
pocket: I'd rather carry my supper and breakfast in my pocket. Now
tell us, who do you call niggers in South Carolina?"
"Why, Captain, we call all what a'n't white folks. Our folks can
tell 'em right smart. They can't shirk out if it's only marked by
the seventeenth generation. You can always tell 'em by the way they
look--they can't look you in the face, if they are ever so white. The
law snaps 'em up once in a while, and then, if they're ever so
white, it makes 'em prove it. I've known several cases where the
doubt was in favor of the nigger, but he couldn't prove it, and had
to stand aside among the darkies. Dogs take my skin, Cap, if
theren't a Jew feller in town as white as anybody, and his father's
a doctor. It got whispered round that he was a nigger, and the
boarders where he stayed raised a fuss about it. The nigger's father
had two of them sued for slander, but they proved the nigger by a
quirk of law that'd make a volume bigger than Blackstone; and
instead of the old Jew getting satisfaction, the judges, as a matter
of policy, granted him time to procure further proof to show that
his son wasn't a nigger. It was a very well-considered insinuation
of the judges, but the young-un stands about A 1 with a prime
nigger-feller.
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