"So, then, it is part true, after all."
"True!" exclaimed Jim, angrily,--"don't make an ass of yourself,
Captain."
"Why, Given, didn't you say yourself that she was an octoroon, or some
such thing?"
"Suppose I did,--what then?"
"I should say, then, that Surrey has disgraced himself forever. He has
not only outraged his family and his friends, and scandalized society,
but he has run against nature itself. It's very plain God Almighty never
intended the two races to come together."
"O, he didn't, hey? Had a special despatch from him, that you know all
about it? I've heard just such talk before from people who seemed to be
pretty well posted about his intentions,--in this particular
matter,--though I generally 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.
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