FullReads

“That’s a neat collar,” says the shop-keeper, as Phipps, sort of miscellaneously, placed his hand upon a brass-band, red-lined dog-collar.

“Collar! don’t call that a collar, do you?”

“I do, sir, a beautiful collar, sir.”

“What for, solgers ?” asks Phipps.

“Soldiers, no, dogs,” says the shop-keeper, puckering his mouth as though he had sampled a lemon.

” O! ” says Phipps, suddenly realizing the fact. “I ain’t got no dogs; bad stock; don’t pay; tax ’em up where I live; wouldn’t pay tax for forty dogs.” More niggers passed, repassed, and looked in at Phipps and the storekeeper.

“I say, ain’t the niggers got to be thick–infernal thick, in your town lately?”

“Well, I don’t know that they are,” replied the shop-keeper; “getting rather scarce, I think, since the Fugitive bill has been put in force over the country, sir, but it does appear to me,” said the shop-keeper, twiging sundry and suspicious-looking col’ud gem’en passing by his store, gaping in rather wistfully at the door, and peeping through the sash of the windows–“it does appear to me, that a good many colored persons are about this morning; yes, there is, why there goes more, more yet; bless me, there’s another, two, three, four, why a dozen has just passed; they seem to look in here rather curiously, I wonder–only look; what has stirred them up, I want to know!” the fluctuation of the Congo market completely attracted the handsome man’s attention; his surprise finally assumed the most tangible shape and complexion of fear, for the niggers, one and all, looked savage as meat-axes, and began to get too numerous to mention.

“Well, guess I’ll be goin’,” says Phipps, after fumbling over some of the shooting-irons, jack-knives, etc.; reaching the street, he was more fully impressed with the fixed fact, that the niggers were all sorts of thick. They fairly crowded him; one buck darkey rubbed slap up against Phipps, as he moved out of the store. “Look here, Mister,” says Phipps, “ain’t all this street big enough for you without a crowdin’ me?”

The nigger stopped, looked arsenic and chain lightning at Phipps, and then moved off, saying in a sort of undertone–

“Gorra, I guess you’ll be crowded a wus’n dat afore dis day is ober.”

“Will, eh?” responded Abner Phipps, slightly mystified as to the why and wherefore, that he should, in particular, be “crowded,” especially by an Ethiopic gentleman.

“I guess I won’t then,” resumed Phipps; “if any body ventures to crowd me, just a purpose, I guess I’ll be darn’d apt, and mighty quick to squash in their heads, or whoop’m on the spot.”

“What dat? got pistils in your pocket, eh?” says one of the two big buck niggers, shying up alongside of the now velocipeding up-country artisan. Phipps looked back, the negroes were following him. “Pistils? who’s talkin’ about pistils, mister?” he ventured to ask.

“Dat’s him, watch’m.”

“Why, we see’d you goin’ in dar, dat pistol shop; want to lay in a stock of dirks and pistils, eh?” says the negro.

“You–you got any hand-cuffs in you’ pocket?” inquired another.

“What dat? got de hand-cuffs in he pocket?”

“Pistils and bowie knibes!” says a third.

“Dat’s him! watch’m!”

“Knock’m down, put dat white hat ober his eyes! Hoo-r-r!”

The negroes now fairly beset our victimized friend Phipps; he stopped, buttoned his coat, the negroes augmented; glared at him like demons; he fixed his hat firmly upon his head; the negroes began to grin and move upon him; he spat upon his hands; the negroes began to yell, and to close in upon him; with one grand effort, one mighty gathering of all the human faculties called into action by fear and desperation, Phipps bounded like a Louisiana bull at a gate post; he knocked down two, square; kicked over four, and rushing through the now very considerable and formidable array of ebony, he broke equal to a wild turkey through a corn bottom, or a sharp knife through a pound of milky butter; and it is very questionable whether Phipps ever stopped running until his boots busted, or he reached his bucket factory on Taunton river. His negro deputation waited on him with a rush clear outside of town, where the speed and bottom of Abner distanced the entire committee. The key to this joke is: Phipps was dogged from Tafts’–by the “vigilant committee,” as an informer, or slave-hunter at least, and hence the delicate attentions of the col’ud pop’lation paid him. I have no doubt, that if Abner Phipps be asked, how things look around Boston, he would observe with some energy,

“Niggers–niggers are thick–Godfree! a-a-a-in’t they thick! “