“God’lmighty has set his limit on dogs, horses, and niggers, Mr. Tomwit.  Thus far and no farther.  Take a nigger baby at birth; a nigger baby has no fontanelles.  It has no window toward heaven.  Its skull is sealed up in darkness.  The nigger brain can never expand and absorb the universe, sir.  It can never rise on the wings of genius and weigh the stars, nor compute the swing of the Pleiades.  Thus far and no farther!  It’s congenital.

“Now, take this Peter Siner and his disgraceful fight over a nigger wench.  Would you expect an educated stud horse to pay no attention to a mare, sir?  You can educate a stud till—­”

“But hold on!” interrupted the old cavalryman.  “I’ve known as gentlemanly stallions as—­as anybody!”

The old attorney cleared his throat, momentarily taken aback at this failure of his metaphor.  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.