"You'll let me have it again when I gets on the plantation, won't
ye, master?" inquires Harry, calmly.
"Let you have it on the plantation?"-Mr. M'Fadden gives his preacher
a piercingly fierce look-"that's just where ye won't have 't. Have
any kind o' song-book ye' wants; only larn 'em to other niggers, so
they can put in the chorus once in a while. Now, old buck (I'm a man
o' genius, ye know), when niggers get larnin' the Bible out o' ther'
own heads, 't makes 'em sassy'r than ther's any calculatin' on. It
just puts the very d-l into property. Why, deacon," he addresses
himself to Harry with more complacency, "my old father-he was as
good a father as ever came from Dublin-said it was just the spilin'
on his children to larn 'em to read. See me, now! what larnin' I'ze
got; got it all don't know how: cum as nat'ral as daylight. I've got
the allfired'st sense ye ever did see; and it's common sense what
makes money. Yer don't think a feller what's got sense like me would
bother his head with larnin' in this ar' down south?" Mr. M'Fadden
exhibits great confidence in himself, and seems quite playful with
his preacher, whom he pats on the shoulder and shakes by the hand.
"I never read three chapters in that ar' book in my whole
life-wouldn't neither. Really, deacon, two-thirds of the people of
our State can't read a word out o' that book. As for larnin', I just
put me mind on the thing, and got the meanin' out on't sudden."
Mr. M'Fadden's soothing consolation, that, as he has become such a
wonderful specimen of mankind without learning, Harry must be a very
dangerous implement of progress if allowed to go about the
plantation with a Bible in his pocket, seems strange in this our
Christian land.
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