"Who is this who forbids me, Basilio Barboza, to
sing of 1840?"
"I forbid you!" shouted the stranger in a rage and smiting his breast.
"Do you know what it is to me to hear that date - that fatal year? It
is like the stab of a knife. I, a boy, was of that year; and when the
fifteen years of my slavery and misery were over there was no longer a
roof to shelter me, nor father nor mother nor land nor cattle!"
Every one instantly understood the case of this poor man, half crazed
at the sudden recollection of his wasted and ruined life, and it did
not seem right that he should bleed and perhaps die for such a cause,
and all at once there was a rush and the crowd thrust itself between
him and his antagonist and hustled him a dozen yards away. Then one in
the crowd, an old man, shouted: "Do you think, friend, that you are
the only one in this gathering who lost his liberty and all he
possessed on earth in that fatal year? I, too, suffered as you have
suffered - "
"And I!" "And I!" shouted others, and while this noisy demonstration
was going on some of those who were pressing close to the stranger
began to ask him if he knew who the man was he had forbidden to sing
of 1840?
