"Blame de point!  I reck'n I knows what I knows.  En mine you, de _real_ pint is down furder—it's down deeper.  It lays in de way Sollermun was raised.  You take a man dat's got on'y one or two chillen; is dat man gwyne to be waseful o' chillen?  No, he ain't; he can't 'ford it.  _He_ know how to value 'em.  But you take a man dat's got 'bout five million chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt.  _He_ as soon chop a chile in two as a cat. Dey's plenty mo'.  A chile er two, mo' er less, warn't no consekens to Sollermun, dad fatch him!"

I never see such a n*****.  If he got a notion in his head once, there warn't no getting it out again.  He was the most down on Solomon of any n***** I ever see.  So I went to talking about other kings, and let Solomon slide.  I told about Louis Sixteenth that got his head cut off in France long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would a been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there.

"Po' little chap."

"But some says he got out and got away, and come to America."

"Dat's good!  But he'll be pooty lonesome—dey ain' no kings here, is dey, Huck?"

"No."

"Den he cain't git no situation.  What he gwyne to do?"

"Well, I don't know.  Some of them gets on the police, and some of them learns people how to talk French."

"Why, Huck, doan' de French people talk de same way we does?"

"_No_, Jim; you couldn't understand a word they said—not a single word."

"Well, now, I be ding-busted!  How do dat come?"

"I don't know; but it's so.  I got some of their jabber out of a book. S'pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy—what would you think?"

"I wouldn' think nuff'n; I'd take en bust him over de head—dat is, if he warn't white.  I wouldn't 'low no n***** to call me dat."

"Shucks, it ain't calling you anything.  It's only saying, do you know how to talk French?"

"Well, den, why couldn't he _say_ it?"

"Why, he _is_ a-saying it.  That's a Frenchman's _way_ of saying it."

"Well, it's a blame ridicklous way, en I doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout it.  Dey ain' no sense in it."

"Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?"

"No, a cat don't."

"Well, does a cow?"

"No, a cow don't, nuther."

"Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?"

"No, dey don't."

"It's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't it?"

"Course."

"And ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from _us_?"

"Why, mos' sholy it is."