“Mark what I say, now, Squire Jones.  The quickest way to catch that ar’ nigger ’s just to lay low and keep whist.  He’s a pious nigger; and a nigger can’t keep his pious a’tween his teeth, no more nor a blackbird can his chattering.  The feller ’ll feel as if he wants to redeem somebody; and seeing how ’tis so, if ye just watch close some Sunday ye’ll nab the fellow with his own pious bait.  Can catch a pious runaway nigger ’most any time; the brute never knows enough to keep it to himself,” says a flashily dressed gentleman, as he leaned against the counter, squinted his eye with an air of ponderous satisfaction, and twirled his tumbler round and round on the counter. “’Pears to me,” he continues, quizzically, “Squire, you’ve got a lot o’ mixed cracker material here, what it’ll be hard to manufactor to make dependable voters on, ’lection day:”  he casts a look at the medley of sleepers.

“I wish the whole pack on ’em was sold into slavery, I do!  They form six-tenths of the voters in our state, and are more ignorant, and a great deal worse citizens, than our slaves.  Bl-’em, there is’nt one in fifty can read or write, and they’re impudenter than the Governor.”

“Hush! hush! squire.  ’Twon’t do to talk so.  There ain’t men nowhere stand on dignity like them fellers; they are the very bone-and-siners of the unwashed, hard-fisted democracy.  The way they’d pull this old tavern down, if they heard reflections on their honour, would be a caution to storms.  But how’s old iron-sided M’Fadden this morning?  Begins to think of his niggers, I reckon,” interrupts the gentleman; to which mine host shakes his head, despondingly.  Mine host wishes M’Fadden, nigger, candidates and all, a very long distance from his place.

“I s’pose he thinks old Death, with his grim visage, ain’t going to call for him just now.  That’s ollers the way with northerners, who lives atween the hope of something above, and the love of makin’ money below:  they never feel bad about the conscience, until old Davy Jones, Esq., the gentleman with the horns and tail, takes them by the nose, and says-’come!’”

“I have struck an idea,” says our worthy host, suddenly striking his hand on the counter.  “I will put up a poster.  I will offer a big reward.  T’other property’s all safe; there’s only the preacher missing.”

“Just the strike!  Give us yer hand, squire!” The gentleman reaches his hand across the counter, and smiles, while cordially embracing mine host.  “Make the reward about two hundred, so I can make a good week’s work for the dogs and me.  Got the best pack in the parish; one on ’em knows as much as most clergymen, he does!” he very deliberately concludes, displaying a wonderful opinion of his own nigger-catching philosophy.

And Mr. Jones, such is mine host’s name, immediately commenced exercising his skill in composition on a large, poster, which with a good hour’s labour he completes, and posts upon the ceiling of the “bar-room,” just below an enormously illustrated Circus bill.