etaphor. However he rallied with legal suppleness:

"You are talking about thoroughbreds, sir."

"I am, sir."

"Good God, Tomwit! you don't imagine I'm comparing a nigger to a
thoroughbred, sir!"

On the street corners, or piled around on cotton-bales down on the wharf,
the negro men of the village discussed the fight. It was for the most
part a purely technical discussion of blows and counters and kicks, and
of the strange fact that a college education failed to enable Siner
utterly to annihilate his adversary. Jim Pink Staggs, a dapper gentleman
of ebony blackness, of pin-stripe flannels and blue serge coat--
altogether a gentleman of many parts--sat on one of the bales and
indolently watched an old black crone fishing from a ledge of rocks just
a little way below the wharf-boat. Around Jim Pink lounged and sprawled
black men and youths, stretching on the cotton-bales like cats in the
sunshine.

Jim Pink was discussing Peter's education.

"I 'fo' Gawd kain't see no use goin' off lak dat an' den comin' back an'
lettin' a white man cheat you out'n yo' hide an' taller, an' lettin' a
black man beat you up tull you has to 'kick him in the spivit. Ef a
aidjucation does you any good a-tall, you'd be boun' to beat de white man
at one en' uv de line, or de black man at de udder. Ef Peter ain't to be
foun' at eider en', wha is he?"

"Um-m-m!" "Eh-h-h!" "You sho spoke a moufful, Jim Pink!" came an
assenting chorus from the bales.

Eventually such gossip died away and took another flurry when a report
went abroad that Tump Pack was carrying a pistol and meant to shoot
Peter on sight. Then this in turn ceased to be news and of human
interest. It clung to Peter's mind longer than to any other person's in
Hooker's Bend, and it presented to the brown man a certain problem in
casuistry.

Should he accede to Tump Pack's possession of Cissie Dildine and give up
seeing the girl? Such a course cut across all his fine-spun theory about
women having free choice of their mates. However, the Harvard man could
not advocate a socialization of courtship when he himself would be the
first beneficiary. The prophet whose finger points selfward is damned.
Furthermore, all Niggertown would side with Tump Pack in such a
controversy. It was no uncommon thing for the very negro women to fight
over their beaux and husbands. As for any social theory changing this
regime, in the first place the negroes couldn't understand the theory;
in the sec