“We must be armed at all points,” added Carteret, “and prepared for defense as well as for attack,—­we must make our campaign a national one.”

“For instance,” resumed the general, “you, Carteret, represent the Associated Press.  Through your hands passes all the news of the state.  What more powerful medium for the propagation of an idea?  The man who would govern a nation by writing its songs was a blethering idiot beside the fellow who can edit its news dispatches.  The negroes are playing into our hands,—­every crime that one of them commits is reported by us.  With the latitude they have had in this state they are growing more impudent and self-assertive every day.  A yellow demagogue in New York made a speech only a few days ago, in which he deliberately, and in cold blood, advised negroes to defend themselves to the death when attacked by white people!  I remember well the time when it was death for a negro to strike a white man.”

“It’s death now, if he strikes the right one,” interjected McBane, restored to better humor by this mention of a congenial subject.

The general smiled a fine smile.  He had heard the story of how McBane had lost his other eye.

“The local negro paper is quite outspoken, too,” continued the general, “if not impudent.  We must keep track of that; it may furnish us some good campaign material.”

“Yes,” returned Carteret, “we must see to that.  I threw a copy into the waste-basket this morning, without looking at it.  Here it is now!”

IX

A WHITE MAN’S “NIGGER”

Carteret fished from the depths of the waste-basket and handed to the general an eighteen by twenty-four sheet, poorly printed on cheap paper, with a “patent” inside, a number of advertisements of proprietary medicines, quack doctors, and fortune-tellers, and two or three columns of editorial and local news.  Candor compels the admission that it was not an impressive sheet in any respect, except when regarded as the first local effort of a struggling people to make public expression of their life and aspirations.  From this point of view it did not speak at all badly for a class to whom, a generation before, newspapers, books, and learning had been forbidden fruit.

“It’s an elegant specimen of journalism, isn’t it?” laughed the general, airily.  “Listen to this ’ad’:—­

“’Kinky, curly hair made straight by one application of our specific.  Our face bleach will turn the skin of a black or brown person four or five shades lighter, and of a mulatto perfectly white.  When you get the color you wish, stop using the preparation.’

“Just look at those heads!—­’Before using’ and ‘After using.’  We’d better hurry, or there’ll be no negroes to disfranchise!  If they don’t stop till they get the color they desire, and the stuff works according to contract, they’ll all be white.  Ah! what have we here?  This looks as though it might be serious.”  Opening the sheet the general read aloud an editorial article, to which Carteret listened intently, his indignation increasing in strength from the first word to the last, while McBane’s face grew darkly purple with anger.