"I taught him to read as soon as I could read myself—perched on his knife board. He won't look at me now. He looks over my head—he scents freedom in the air. He was always very ambitious. I do not think he ever troubled books much. But then as my father said, Dick, standing in front of his sideboard, had heard of all subjects of heaven or earth discussed—and by the best heads in our world.
He is proud, too, in his way. Hetty his wife complained the other menservants were so fine in their livery.
'Nonsense, old woman—a butler never demeans himself to wear livery. He is always in plain clothes.' Somewhere he picked up on that.
He is the first negro that I have felt a change in. They go about in their black masks, not a ripple or an emotion showing—and yet on all other subjects except the war they are the most excitable all races. Now, Dick might make a very respectable Egyptian sphinx, so inscrutably silent is he."
