Marston will settle that little affair in a very quiet way." He
gives the man-vender a look of approval; the very celebrated Mr.
Graspum has self-confidence enough for "six folks what don't deal
in niggers." A bystander touching him on the arm, he gives his head
a cunning shake, crooks his finger on his red nose. "Just a thing of
that kind," he whispers, making some very delicate legal
gesticulations with the fore-finger of his right hand in the palm of
his left; then, with great gravity, he discusses some very nice
points of nigger law. He is heard to say it will only be a waste of
time, and make some profitable rascality for the lawyers. He could
have settled the whole on't in seven minutes. "Better give them up
honourably, and let them be sold with the rest. Property's property
all over the world; and we must abide by the laws, or what's the
good of the constitution? To feel bad about one's own folly! The
idea of taking advantage of it at this late hour won't hold good in
law. How contemptibly silly! men feeling fatherly after they have
made property of their own children! Poor, conscientious fools, how
they whine at times, never thinking how they would let their
womanish feelings cheat their creditors. There's no honour in that."
"Gentlemen!" interrupts the vender, "we have had enough discussion,
moral, legal, and otherwise. We will now have some selling."
The honourable sheriff desires to say a word or two upon points not
yet advanced. "The sheriff! the sheriff!" is exclaimed by several
voices.
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