Bes' thing he knows is dat he doan' know nothin'. Dat's a pow'fle useful piece o' l'arnin' to help a man, black or white, from makin' a fool er hesself bigger dan what de good Lawd 'tended him fer ter be. Matt he gradyuated in dat 'ar knowledge an' got he stiffikit. When de good Lawd turn a man out a fool, he got ter be a fool, but he needn' ter be a bigger fool den what he gotter."
The Doctor assured him that he was; but the man didn't go away. He hung around and argued. He told us he had known of many ships being sunk through "undermanning." He got out what he called his stiffikit a paper which said what a good sailor he was and implored us, if we valued our lives, to take him.
"I never knowed afore they could be Christians," he said, looking, with tears in his soft, keen eyes, at the every-day scene, and with no faintest thought of irreverence. "I never knowed it, but I'd give a stiffikit o' membership in the orthodoxest church goin' to that dog there."
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