Why, ain’t no better order in the world than the Ku Klux — if they run it right.
That’s it. If they run it right.
I swear, it makes me sick to see how they run a fine order in the ground the way they do around here.
Well, men, I tell you. It’s easy enough for us to set here and belly-ache like we’re doing about how they run it. But just jump in and try to run it oncet. Just try to run it oncet.
And specially a order what’s trying to pull off something big, like the Ku Klux is. It’s just like this fellow says to me, the one I was just now telling you about. “Funk,” he says to me, “there’s one thing they can’t take away from the Ku Klux. It ain’t no steamboat-picnic order. No, sir. When the Ku Klux holds a picnic, they don’t sell no round-trip excursion tickets. That they don’t.”
And another thing: that there singing. You ask me, I say that was a pretty doggone nice way to invite a fellow to church. I hope to git invited that way oncet. I’m here to say I do.
And this here dirty whelp ain’t got no more appreciation than to sock it to them with a pump-gun. Six shots, men. Think of that. Them poor guys didn’t have no more chance than a snowball in hell.
Yep. Ku Klux is all right. It sure is.
You hear that, don’t you, Moon?
Lemme alone. I ain’t heared nothing.
Listen at that! Listen at that! I swear, people that dumb, I don’t see how they git put on a jury.
Why hell, Wemple, that’s why they git put on a jury. Them lawyers figures the less sense they got, the more lies they believe.
Now listen at me, Moon. ’Cause if you don’t git this straight, you’re libel to git Ku Kluxed before you ever git outen this room. Now first off, effen you git it straight, we ain’t going to tell the judge what you done. Then maybe you won’t have to go to jail.
Oh thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wemple.
But that ain’t all of it. When you go out of here, if you got to do any talking about what you heared in here, we want you to tell what you heared and not no dam lies like some of them does.
I won’t say ary word, Mr. Wemple. I hope my die I won’t.
Well, you might. Now you heared these gentlemen say, didn’t you, that the Ku Klux is a fine order, one of the finest orders in the United States?
I sure did, Mr. Wemple. Ku Klux is a fine order. Yes, Mr. Wemple, I heared them say that. All of them.
Now—
Wait a minute, Wemple... You got that all straight, Moon?
Yep. Ku Klux is a fine order.
Then, Wemple, if he done learned that, why look like to me like he ain’t going to learn no more. Not today. Just better let him hang on to that and call it a day.
I expect you’re right at that. Now, Moon, just to show you what a fine order we think the Ku Klux is, we’re all going to chip in a dollar so you can git took in. Ain’t we, men?
We sure are.
[There is a brisk digging into pockets. MR. WEMPLE collects the money and hands it over to MR. MOON.]
There you are, Moon. Ten dollars for to git took in the Ku Klux and a dollar to git yourself a pint of corn.
Thank you, Mr. Wemple. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.
Well, I reckon that’s all there is to it. Look to me like we’re done.
This ain’t no first degree, men. This here is manslaughter. Fact of the matter, it might be self-defense, ’cepting I always say when a man git killt, why the one that done it had ought to be found guilty of something. There’s too many people getting killt lately.
Well, Mr. Petry, that’s all right with me. If it’s all right with the rest of them...
[There is a moment of mumbling and nodding, which apparently betokens assent.]
Then it’s manslaughter.
[He pokes his head out of the door, gives a signal to a bailiff, and in a moment they are filing back to the courtroom.]
And that’s something else I want to bring to your attention, Moon, old man. Up to the last minute, they was all for giving him first degree...
And fact of the matter, I always did say the Ku Klux was all right, if they’d run it right... Why sure, Ku Klux is a fine order... You bet... Citizenship... Patriotism... All like of that...
The Commissioners
The office of the County Commissioners, Room No. I, courthouse. It is morning. Sitting in silence around the large table in the center of the room are MR. LERCH, superintendent of the county almshouse; MR. MUKENS, janitor of the almshouse; and MR. YOST, an inmate of the almshouse. Presently MR. WADE, chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, enters through a door marked “Private.”
I reckon you gentlemen know what I called this little meeting for. You all seen them pieces in the papers where people are getting burned up down to the almshouse, and I got to lay the matter before the commissioners, account of them people down in the lower end of the county raising so much hell about it. So I thought the thing to do was for us to kind of get together and listen to this man here that done all the talking and see what he’s got to say for hisself.
All I got to say, Mr. Wade, is this here stuff in the papers is a pack of lies from start to finish and that’s all there is to it. What gets me is this here man here, and the county’s been feeding him three year now, and he goes and tells them paper men a pack of lies like this here.
Four year.
Four year, and that’s all the gratitude he’s got!
I hope Christ may kill me if I knowed they was paper men. Then I never told them all that stuff they put in. They made up a whole lot theirself.
I don’t want you to think it’s what you call a reflection on you, Mr. Lerch, because I know how fine you been running things out at the almshouse and all like of that. But it’s them people down in the lower end of the county. You know how they are.
Don’t tell me nothing about them people down in the lower end of the county, Mr. Wade. I know ’em.
Half of ’em’s already in the almshouse and half of ’em got relations that’s in.