smearing his red-flannel arm over his grimy phiz; "but then, sir, it
won't rub off. He's a nigger, and there's no getting round it.

"All right, sir! give you your chance directly. Don't speak yet,--ain't
through, if _you_ please. Well, sir, it's agen nature,--you may talk
agen it, and work agen it, and fight agen it till all's blue, and what
good'll it do? You can't get an Irishman, and, what's more, a free-born
American citizen, to put himself on a level with a nigger,--not by no
manner of means. No, sir; you can turn out the whole lot, and get
another after it, and another after that, and so on to the end of the
chapter, and you can't find men among 'em all that'll stay and have him
strutting through 'em, up to his stool and his books, grand as a
peacock."

"Would they work _with_ him?"

"At the same engines, and the like, do you mean?"

"Yes."

"Nary time, so 'tain't likely they'll work under him. Now, sir, you see
I know what I'm saying, and I'm saying it to _you_, Mr. Surrey, and not
to your father, because he won't take a word from me nor nobody
else,--and here's just the case. Now I ain't bullying, you understand,
and I say it because somebody else'd say it, if I didn't, uglier and
rougher. Abe Franklin'll have to go out of this shop in precious short
order, or every man here'll bolt next Saturday night. There! now I've
done, sir, and you can fire away."

But as he showed no signs of "firing away," and stood still, pondering,