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First I wanted him to go to Yale, like me. Then I saw that the little stinker had an angle. What a cover. Anthropologists. We used to send priests, but they were too obvious.”
    “You must be very proud of him, Mr. Swille.”
    “He was doing well until … until these Congo savages captured him and … and … well.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry, was he … ?”
    “You might say that he was killed. But, Mr. President, we all have our trials. An unpleasant subject. A smart one he was, like your Todd. Very inquisitive. It’s upon my son’s advice that I don’t permit any of the employees to use the telephone. I permit Uncle Robin to use it because he’s such a simple creature he wouldn’t have the thought powers for using it deviously. He’s been in the house for so long that he’s lost his thirst for pagan ways and is as good a gentleman as you or me.”
    Lincoln nods, approvingly.
    “Why, thank you, Cap’n Swille.”
    “Don’t mention it, Robin. I don’t know what I’d do without you. He brings me two gallons of slave women’s milk each morning. It keeps me going. He travels all over the South in an airplane, buying supplies for the estate. He’s become quite a bargainer and knows about all of the sales …
    “Of course, I still buy the … well, the help. Just got back from Ryan’s Mart in Charleston with a boy named Pompey. Does the work of ten niggers. I got him working in the house here. He doesn’t say much but is really fast. The boy can serve dinner before it’s cooked, beats himself getting up in the morning so that when he goes to the bathroom to shave he has to push his shadow out of the way, and zips about the house like a toy train. I’m really proud of this bargain. Why, on his days off he stands outside of the door, protecting me, like a piece of wood. He can stand there for hours without even blinking an eye. Says he would die if something happens to me. Isn’t that right, Uncle Robin? Though he’s asp-tongued and speaks in this nasal tone, Pompey is a saint. He doesn’t come down to the races, nor does he Camptown; doesn’t smoke, drink, cuss or wench, stays up in his room when he’s not working, probably contemplating the Scriptures. They don’t make them like that any more, Mr. Lincoln. I have a shrewd eye for good property, don’t you think, Abe?”
    “Well, Mr. Swille, if you’ve read my campaign literature, you’d know that my position is very clear. What a man does with his property is his business. Of course, I can’t help but agree with one of my distinguished predecessors, George Washington, who said, ‘There are numbers who would rather facilitate the escape of slaves than apprehend them as runaways.’ That law is hard to enforce, Mr. Swille.”
    Swille rises. “Look, Lincoln, one of them kinks, 40s, wiped me out when he left here. That venerable mahogany took all my guns, slaughtered my livestock and shot the overseer right between the eyes. And the worst betrayal of all was Raven Quickskill, my trusted bookkeeper. Fooled around with my books, so that every time I’d buy a new slave he’d destroy the invoices and I’d have no record of purchase; he was also writing passes and forging freedom papers. We gave him Literacy, the most powerful thing in the pre-technological pre-post-rational age—and what does he do with it? Uses it like that old Voodoo—that old stuff the slaves mumble about. Fetishism and grisly rites, only he doesn’t need anything but a pen he had shaped out of cock feathers and chicken claws. Oh, they are bad sables, Mr. Lincoln. They are bad, bad sables. Not one of them with the charm and good breeding of Ms. Phyllis Wheatly, who wrote a poem for the beloved founder of this country, George Washington.” He begins to recite with feeling:
“Thy ev’ry action let the Goddess guide.
    A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,
    With gold unfading, Washington! We thine.
    “And then that glistening rust-black Stray Leechfield. We saw him as