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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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stop to it! Why, what do ye think ye are? May be ye think ye’r a gentleman, Mas- ter Tom, to be a-telling your master what’s right, and what an’t! So you pretend it’s wrong to flog the gal!” “I think so, Mas’r,” said Tom; “the poor crittur’s sick and feeble; ‘twould be downright cruel, and it’s what I never will do, nor begin to. Mas’r, if you mean to kill me, kill me; but as to my raising my hand agin any one here, I never shall,- I’ll die first!” Tom spoke in a mild voice, but with a decision that could not be mistaken. Le- gree shook with anger; his greenish eyes glared fiercely, and his very whiskers seemed to curl with passion; but, like some ferocious beast, that plays with its vic- tim before he devours it, he kept back his strong impulse to proceed to immediate violence, and broke out into bitter raillery. “Well, here’s a pious dog, at last let down among us sinners!- a saint, a gentle- man, and no less, to talk to us sinners about our sins! Powerful holy critter, he must be! Here, you rascal, you make believe to be so pious,- didn’t you never hear, out of yer Bible, ‘Servants, obey yer masters’? An’t I yer master? Didn’t I pay down twelve hundred dollars cash, for all there is inside yer old cussed black shell? An’t yer mine, now, body and soul?” he said, giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy boot; “tell me!” In the very depth of physical suffering, bowed by brutal oppression, this ques- tion shot a gleam of joy and triumph through Tom’s soul. He suddenly stretched |
