nigger buyer would kill him for yisterday's blow. Thinks I:
'Samson is too white a nigger to be killed that way, by smoke!' but the
prejudice agin a nigger hittin' a white man is sich in this state that
Joe Johnson, bloody as he is, would never have stretched hemp for Samson
Hat; so I picked a quarrel with the nigger buyer to take the fight out
of him before Samson should come. He won't fight nobody now in this
town. _His_ hokey-pokey is done _yer_."

"You took a great risk, Phoebus. He is such an evil fellow in his
resentments, that I let him hide and eat in my quarters for fear of some
ill requital if I refused. That gang of Patty Cannon's is the curse of
the Eastern Shore."

"And if you'll pardon a younger and a porer man, Judge, it's jest sich
gentlemen as you that lets it go on. You politicians give them people
'munity, an' let 'em alone because they fight fur you in 'lection times
an' air popular with foresters an' pore trash, because they persecutes
niggers an' treats to liquor. You know the laws is agin their actions on
both sides of the Delaware line, but in Maryland they're a dead letter."

"You speak plain truth, James Phoebus, brave as your conduct. But the
poor men must make a sentiment against these kidnappers, because among
the ignorant poor they find their defenders and equals."

"Judge," the pungy captain said, "they'se a-makin' a pangymonum of all
the destreak about Patty Cannon's. By smoke! it's a shame to liberty. In
open day they lead free niggers, men, wimmin, an' little children, too,
to be sold, who's free as my mommy and your daughter."

Judge Custis thought painfully of the scant freedom his daughter now
enjoyed. Jimmy Phoebus continued:

"Now yer, we're raising hokey-pokey about the Algerynes and the
Trypollytins capturin' of a few Christian people an' sellin' of 'em to
Turkey, an' about the Turkey people makin' slaves of the Christian Greek
folks. Henry Clay is cuttin' a big splurge about it. Money is bein'
raised all over the country to send it to 'em. Commodo' Decatur was a
big man for a-breakin' of it up. By smoke! they're sellin' more free
people to death and hell along Mason and Dixon's line, than up the whole
buzzum of the Mediterranean Sea."

The brown-skinned speaker was more excited now than he had been during
all the collision with Joe Johnson.

"Indeed, Phoebus, they have kidnapped several thousand people, the
Philadelphia abolitionists say, but the reports must be exagger