"Gentlemen, three days since I received a call from my friend Buxton. He appeared melancholy and dejected, which surprised me; but what surprised me more, in respect to his present appearance, was the manifest disarrangement of his collar. It did not stand up on one side with the majestic erectness which characterized it on the other. On the left it was hanging down flabbily; its self-sustaining power was departed.
"I saw, by his countenance, that something important to him had occurred, and the appearance of his collar only tended to confirm my suspicions. I accordingly asked him what was the trouble.
"'Trouble,' said he, 'enough of it. Sir,' he continued, 'last night I was locked up in a cell at the station-house, for exercising the privileges of a freeman--a native American citizen. I was arrested, and violently dragged off to that cell, where I remained last night, and this morning was tried before the magistrate, only, however, to be acquitted. What made it worse was, that I should be arrested with a nigger, and be tried with a nigger, and acquitted with a nigger. He was a huge nigger--a colossal nigger--a nigger fully six feet and four inches in height; his face betrayed no evidence of light--it was all shade; he was a nigger, above all others, so black, that he would make an excellent drum-major to a funeral procession, if custom sanctioned the employment of that non-commissioned official on such occasions. Inasmuch, however, as custom doesn't do any such thing, the next best use to which the sable giant could be put, would be to make his face the figurehead of a Broadway mourning store; with the exception of his large size and remarkable black face, the nigger in question looked very much like other niggers not in question. He was a nigger, in fact, who gave as his name the half-classic and half-descriptive appellation of Cesar Freeman. I have always been a "woolly-head" until now, but may I be bursted if I don't go and join the Know Nothings to-morrow, and begin a crusade against all niggers--particularly nigger-giants and nigger women.
"'How did this occur?' I inquired, anxiously.