of taking away "ouah niggahs," as if
they were as plenty about his place as hills of corn. As a rule, the
more abjectly poor a Southerner was, the more readily he worked himself
into a rage over the idea of "takin' away ouah niggahs."

I replied in burlesque of his assumption of ownership:

"What are you coming up North to burn my rolling mills and rob my comrade
here's bank, and plunder my brother's store, and burn down my uncle's
factories?"

No reply, to this counter thrust. The old man passed to the third
inevitable proposition:

"What air you'uns puttin' ouah niggahs in the field to fight we'uns foh?"

Then the whole car-load shouted back at him at once:

"What are you'uns putting blood-hounds on our trails to hunt us down,
for?"

Old Man--(savagely), "Waal, ye don't think ye kin ever lick us; leastways
sich fellers as ye air?"

Myself--"Well, we warmed it to you pretty lively until you caught us.
There were none of us but what were doing about as good work as any stock
you fellows could turn out. No Rebels in our neighborhood had much to
brag on. We are not a drop in the bucket, either. There's millions more
better men than we are where we came from, and they are all determined to
stamp out your miserable Confederacy. You've got to come to it, sooner
or later; you must knock under, sure as white blossoms make little
apples. You'd better make up your mind to it."

Old Man--"No, sah, nevah. Ye nevah kin conquer us! We're the bravest
people and the best fighters on airth. Ye nevah kin whip any people
that's a fightin' fur their liberty an' their right; an' ye nevah can
whip the South, sah, any way. We'll fight ye until all the men air
killed, and then the wimmen'll fight ye, sah."

Myself--"Well, you may think so, or you may not. From the way our boys
are snatching the Confederacy's real estate away, it begins to look as if
you'd not have enough to fight anybody on pretty soon. What's the
meaning of all this fortifying?"

Old Man--"Why, don't you know? Our folks are fixin' up a place foh Bill
Sherman to butt his brains out gain'."

"Bill Sherman!" we all shouted in surprise: "Why he ain't within two
hundred miles of this place, is he?"

Old Man--"Yes, but he is, tho'. He thinks he's played a sharp Yankee
trick on Hood. He found out he couldn't lick him in a squar' fight,
nohow; he'd tried that on too often; so he just sneaked 'round behind
him, and made a break for the center of the St