rally noticed they weren't chaps who were very
intimate with him in any other way."

The Captain laughed. "Thank you, Jim, for the compliment; but come, you
aren't going to say that nature hasn't placed a barrier between these
people and us? an instinct that repels an Anglo-Saxon from a negro
always and everywhere?"

"Ho, ho! that's good! why, Captain, if you keep on, you'll make me talk
myself into a regular abolitionist. Instinct, hey? I'd like to know,
then, where all the mulattoes, and the quadroons, and the octoroons come
from,--the yellow-skins and brown-skins and skins so nigh white you
can't tell 'em with your spectacles on! The darkies must have bleached
out amazingly here in America, for you'd have to hunt with a long pole
and a telescope to boot to find a straight-out black one anywhere
round,--leastwise that's my observation."

"That was slavery."

"Yes 'twas,--and then the damned rascals talk about the
amalgamationists, and all that, up North. 'Twan't the abolitionists;
'twas the slaveholders and their friends that made a race of half-breeds
all over the country; but, slavery or no slavery, they showed nature
hadn't put any barriers between them,--and it seems to me an enough
sight decenter and more respectable plan to marry fair and square than
to sell your own children and the mother that bore them. Come, now,
ain't it?"

"Well, yes, if you come to that, I suppose it is!"

"You _suppose_ it is! See here,--I've found out something since I've
been down here, and have had time to think; 'tain't the living together
that troubles squeamish stomachs; it's the marrying. That's what's the
matter!"

"Just about!" assented the Captain, with an amused look, "and here's a
case in point. Surrey ought to have been shot for marrying one of that
degraded race."

"Bah! he married one of his own race, if I know how to calculate."

"There, Jim, don't be a fool! If she's got any negro blood in her veins
she's a nigger, and all your talk won't make her anything else."

"I say, Captain, I've heard that some of your ancestors were Indians: is
that so?"

"Yes: my great-grandmother was an Indian chief's daughter,--so they say;
and you might as well claim royalty when you have the chance."

"Bless me! your great-grandmother, eh? Come, now, what do you call
yourself,--an Injun?"

"No, I don't. I call myself an Anglo-Saxon."

"What, not call yourself an Injun,--when your great-grandmother was one?
Here's a pretty