Robinson took
the part of England, Wilkins stuck to the States; he said:
"A poor man has no chance at home; he is kept down by landlords, and
can never get a farm of his own. In Illinois I am a free man, and
have no one to lord it over me. If I had lived and slaved in England
for a hundred years I should never have been any better off, and now
I have a farm as good as any in Will County, and am just as good a
man as e'er another in it."
Now Wilkins was only a small man, shorter by four inches than
Robinson, who towered above him, and at once resented the claim to
equality. He said:
"You as good as any other man, are you? Why there ain't a more
miserable little skunk within twenty miles round Joliet."
Robinson was forgetting the etiquette of the West. No man--except,
perhaps, in speaking to a nigger--ever assumed a tone of insolent
superiority to any other man; if he did so, it was at the risk of
sudden death; even a hired man was habitually treated with civility.
The titles of colonel, judge, major, captain, and squire were in
constant use both in public and private; there was plenty of humorous
"chaff," but not insult. Colonels, judges, majors, captains, and
squires were civil, both to each other and to the rest of the
citizens. Robinson, in speaking to his fellow countryman, forgot for
a moment that he was not in dear old England, where he could settle a
little difference with his fists.
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