Sunday, November 27, 2011

Juxtaposed without comment.

"I wonder why it is," said Hal. "There seems to be so much of that nasty element in our Western City politics."
Adelaide answered--it was one of the curious and unforeseen consequences of woman suffrage, or rather of woman suffrage granted too early, without the women having had to work for it, and develop intelligence and public spirit. "Men don't pay much attention to scandals," she said, "but when you're dealing with women voters, there's nothing pays so well as a nasty story."
--Upton Sinclair, The Coal War

"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio -- a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane -- the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me -- I'll never vote agin as long as I live."
--Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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