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Tom Sawyer Abroad 35
children? 'Cose dey is. Well, den! is he gwine to scriminate 'twixt 'em?"
" Scriminate! I never heard such ignorance. There ain't no discriminating about it. When he makes you and some more of his children black, and makes the rest of us white, what do you call that?"
Jim see the p'int. He was stuck. He couldn't answer. Tom says:
" He does discriminate, you see, when he wants to; but this case here ain't no discrimination of his, it's man's. The Lord made the day, and he made the night; but he didn't invent the hours, and he didn't distribute them around. Man did that."
" Mars Tom, is dat so? Man done it?"
"Certainly."
"Who tole him he could?"
"Nobody. He never asked."
Jim studied a minute, and says:
"Well, dat do beat me. I wouldn't V tuck no sich resk. But some people ain't scared o' nothin'. Dey bangs right ahead; dey don't care what happens. So den dey's allays an hour's diff'unce everywhah, Mars Tom?"
" An hour? No! It's four minutes difference for every degree of longitude, you know. Fifteen of 'em's an hour, thirty of 'em's two hours, and so on. When it's one clock Tuesday morning in England, it's eight o'clock the night before in New York."
Jim moved a little way along the locker, and you could see he was insulted. He kept shaking his head |
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