"Shake hands with
Mr. Tucker."
Mr. Tucker, a little, old, red-faced man on the other side of the
stove, advanced and went through the ceremony suggested.
"We were just a-talking about them Cubapinos," explained Reddy. "The
idee of them fellers a-pitching into us after all we've done for 'em.
It's outrageous. They're only monkeys anyway, and they ought to be
shot, every mother's son on 'em. Haven't we freed 'em from the cruel
Castalians that they've been hating so for three hundred years?"
"They seem to be hating us pretty well just now," said a man in the
corner, whose voice sounded familiar to Sam. He turned and recognized
the commercial traveler of the day before.
"They're welcome to hate us," answered Jackson, "and when it comes to
a matter of hating I shouldn't think much of us if we couldn't make 'em
hate us as much in a year as the Castalians could in three hundred.
They're a blamed slow lot and we ain't. That's all there is of it. What
do you think, Captain?"
"I fear," said Sam, "that they don't quite understand the great
blessings we're conferring on them."
"What blessings?" asked the drummer.
"Why," said Sam, "liberty and independence--no, I don't mean
independence exactly, but liberty and freedom."
"Then why don't we leave them alone instead of fighting them?"
"What an idee!" exclaimed Tucker. "They don't know what liberty is, and
we must teach 'em if we have to blow their brains out.
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