{"id":"01KG8AKCKR5HZ8RS365725AAN7","cid":"bafkreib4ioj322b5hqj3x6rfgvsftatumh4bdeno6yvjepl62diydufrbm","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5171,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 5","source_file":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","start_line":5104,"text":"\"At this coon. Can you, the fox, catch him?\"\r\n\r\n\"If you mean,\" returned the other, not unselfpossessed, \"whether I\r\nflatter myself that I can in any way dupe you, or impose upon you, or\r\npass myself off upon you for what I am not, I, as an honest man, answer\r\nthat I have neither the inclination nor the power to do aught of the\r\nkind.\"\r\n\r\n\"Honest man? Seems to me you talk more like a craven.\"\r\n\r\n\"You in vain seek to pick a quarrel with me, or put any affront upon me.\r\nThe innocence in me heals me.\"\r\n\r\n\"A healing like your own nostrums. But you are a queer man--a very queer\r\nand dubious man; upon the whole, about the most so I ever met.\"\r\n\r\nThe scrutiny accompanying this seemed unwelcome to the diffidence of the\r\nherb-doctor. As if at once to attest the absence of resentment, as well\r\nas to change the subject, he threw a kind of familiar cordiality into\r\nhis air, and said: \"So you are going to get some machine made to do your\r\nwork? Philanthropic scruples, doubtless, forbid your going as far as New\r\nOrleans for slaves?\"\r\n\r\n\"Slaves?\" morose again in a twinkling, \"won't have 'em! Bad enough to\r\nsee whites ducking and grinning round for a favor, without having those\r\npoor devils of niggers congeeing round for their corn. Though, to me,\r\nthe niggers are the freer of the two. You are an abolitionist, ain't\r\nyou?\" he added, squaring himself with both hands on his rifle, used for\r\na staff, and gazing in the herb-doctor's face with no more reverence\r\nthan if it were a target. \"You are an abolitionist, ain't you?\"\r\n\r\n\"As to that, I cannot so readily answer. If by abolitionist you mean a\r\nzealot, I am none; but if you mean a man, who, being a man, feels for\r\nall men, slaves included, and by any lawful act, opposed to nobody's\r\ninterest, and therefore, rousing nobody's enmity, would willingly\r\nabolish suffering (supposing it, in its degree, to exist) from among\r\nmankind, irrespective of color, then am I what you say.\"\r\n\r\n\"Picked and prudent sentiments. You are the moderate man, the invaluable\r\nunderstrapper of the wicked man. You, the moderate man, may be used for\r\nwrong, but are useless for right.\"\r\n\r\n\"From all this,\" said the herb-doctor, still forgivingly, \"I infer, that\r\nyou, a Missourian, though living in a slave-state, are without slave\r\nsentiments.\"\r\n\r\n\"Aye, but are you? Is not that air of yours, so spiritlessly enduring\r\nand yielding, the very air of a slave? Who is your master, pray; or are\r\nyou owned by a company?\"\r\n\r\n\"_My_ master?\"\r\n\r\n\"Aye, for come from Maine or Georgia, you come from a slave-state, and a\r\nslave-pen, where the best breeds are to be bought up at any price from a\r\nlivelihood to the Presidency. Abolitionism, ye gods, but expresses the\r\nfellow-feeling of slave for slave.\"\r\n\r\n\"The back-woods would seem to have given you rather eccentric notions,\"\r\nnow with polite superiority smiled the herb-doctor, still with manly\r\nintrepidity forbearing each unmanly thrust, \"but to return; since, for\r\nyour purpose, you will have neither man nor boy, bond nor free, truly,\r\nthen some sort of machine for you is all there is left. My desires for\r\nyour success attend you, sir.--Ah!\" glancing shoreward, \"here is Cape\r\nGirádeau; I must leave you.\"\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 5"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJM4MS3PS24HNRJ04GFSB","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKCKRH1X9BENMAVJV6J9J","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:02.680Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:09.925Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}