I was sitting in the bar, quietly smokin a frugal pipe, when two middle-aged and stern-looking females and a young and pretty female suddenly entered the room. They were accompanied by two umberellers and a negro gentleman.
"Do you feel for the down-trodden?" said one of the females, a thin-faced and sharp-voiced person in green spectacles.
"Do I feel for it?" ansered the lan'lord, in a puzzled voice--"do I feel for it?"
"Inasmuch as to which?" said the lan'lord.
"You see this man?" said the female, pintin her umbreller at the negro gentleman.
"Yes!" said the female, raisin her voice to a exceedin high pitch, "you see him, and he's your brother!"
"No, I'm darned if he is!" said the lan'lord, hastily retreating to his beer-casks.
"And yours!" shouted the excited female, addressing me. "He is also your brother!"
"No, I think not, marm," I pleasantly replied. "The nearest we come to that color in our family was the case of my brother John. He had the janders for sev'ral years, but they finally left him. I am happy to state that, at the present time, he hasn't a solitary jander."
I looked at him. He was an able-bodied, well-dressed, comfortable-looking negro. He looked as though he might heave three or four good meals a day into him without a murmur.
"Look a that down-trodden man!" cried the female.
"Well," said the lan'lord, "why don't you go to the willins about it? Why do you come here tellin us niggers is our brothers, and brandishin your umbrellers round us like a lot of lunytics? You're wuss than the sperrit-rappers!"
"Have you," said middle-aged female No. 2, who was a quieter sort of person, "have you no sentiment--no poetry in your soul--no love for the beautiful? Dost never go into the green fields to cull the beautiful flowers?"
"I not only never dost," said the landlord, in an angry voice, "but I'll bet you five pound you can't bring a man as dares say I durst."
"The little birds," continued the female, "dost not love to gaze onto them?"
"I would I were a bird, that I might fly to thou!" I humorously sung, casting a sweet glance at the pretty young woman.
"Don't you look in that way at my dawter!" said female No. 1., in a violent voice; "you're old enough to be her father."