d that time and my own tact should
assuredly help me find a way to say it to him, if he continued in his
present course.

"Daddy Ben says you can't be a real Northerner."

This was his first observation, and I think that we must have walked a
mile before he made it.

"Because I pounded a negro? Of course, he retains your Southern
ante-bellum mythical notion of Northerners--all of us willing to have
them marry our sisters. Well, there's a lady at our boarding-house who
says you are a real gambler."

The impish look came curling round his lips, but for a moment only, and
it was gone.

"That shook Daddy Ben up a good deal."

"Having his grandson do it, do you mean?"

"Oh, he's used to his grandson! Grandsons in that race might just as
well be dogs for all they know or care about their progenitors. Yet
Daddy Ben spent his savings on educating Charles Cotesworth and two
more--but not one of them will give the old man a house to-day. If ever
I have a home--" John stopped himself, and our silence was no longer
easy; our unspoken thoughts looked out of our eyes so that they could
not meet. Yet no one, unless directly invited by him, had the right to
say to hint what I was thinking, except some near relative. Therefore,
to relieve this silence which had ceased to be agreeable, I talked
about Daddy Ben and his grandsons, and negro voting, and the huge lie of
"equality" which our lips vociferate and our lives daily disprove. This
took us comfortably away from weddings and cakes into the subject
of lynching, my violent condemnation of which surprised him; for our
discussion had led us over a wide field, and one fertile in well-known
disputes of the evergreen sort, conducted by the North mostly with more
theory than experience, and by the South mostly with more heat than
light; whereas, between John and me, I may say that our amiability
was surpassed only by our intelligence! Each allowed for the other's
standpoint, and both met in many views: he would have voted against
the last national Democratic ticket but for the Republican upholding
of negro equality, while I assured him that such stupid and criminal
upholding was on the wane. He informed me that he did not believe the
pure blooded African would ever be capable of taking the intellectual
side of the white man's civilization, and I informed him that we must
patiently face this probability, and teach the African whatever he could
profitably learn and no more; and each o