FOLKS FROM DIXIE
right, but he was always plausible. No one knew better than he how to bring out the good point of a bad article. He would have sold you a blind horse and convinced you that he was doing you a favour in giving you an animal that would not be frightened by anything he saw. No one but he could have been in a city so short a time and yet gained to such an extent the confidence and cash of the people about him.
When a coloured man wishes to start a stock company, he issues a call and holds a mass meeting. This is what Solomon Ruggles did. A good many came. Some spoke for and some against the movement, but the promoter's plausible argument carried the day.
"Gent'men," he said, "my fellow colo'ed brotheren, I jest want to say this to you, that we Af'-Americans been ca'yin' a leaky bucket to the well too long. We git the stream from the ground, an' back to the ground it goes befoah we kin git any chance to make use o' what we've drawed. But, not to speak in meterphers, this is what I mean. I mean that we work for the white folks for their money. All they keer about us is ouah work, an' all we keer
160
