I learned early, away back in short dresses, when a lawyer took me and used me the same as a brass cuspidor or a new horse and buggy or a swivel chair or anything that gives more life-ease for spot cash—he paid $600 cash to me for the keep of the child of my womb and his loins. And then he went to a revival, sang “Jesus Knows All about Our Troubles,” moaned he was a sinner and wanted Jesus to wash his sins away. He joined the church and stood up one night before hundreds of people and blabbed to them how he used me, had a child by me, and paid me $600 cash. And I waited till one night I saw him in the public square and I slashed his face with a leather horsewhip, calling all the wild crazy names that came to my tongue to damn him and damn him and damn him, for a sneak in the face of God and man.

Sayings of Henry Stephens

(Springfield, Illinois, 1917)

If you get enough money

you can buy anything

except . . . you got to die.

I don’t like meatheads

shootin’ off their mouths

always wrasslin’ ’n wranglin’.

The cost of things to live on

has gone too high.

They ought to be brung down

where they’s more equal like

with other things.

One summer

potatoes was peddled

around Springfield here

for fifty cents a bushel;

another summer

I paid four dollars a bushel.

Tell me why this is.

We got to work to eat.

And the scripture says:

“Muzzle not the ox that

treadeth out the corn.”

Human is human.

Human may be wrong

but it’s human all the same.

There’s time when a scab

ought to have his head knocked off

his shoulders.

But first we ought to talk to him

like a brother.

I pay a dollar a month to the coal miners’ union

to help the street car strikers.

It costs me $25 if they ketch me ridin’ on a car.

That’s all right.

Las’ Monday night I busted somethin’ in my left arm.

I walked, mind you, I walked a mile and a half

down to the doctor’s office.

It kep’ on swellin’ an’ when I got home

my wife had to put salt and vinegar on

to get my sleeve loose.

They always did say

Springfield is a wickeder town for women

than Chicago.

I see ’em on the streets.

It always was

an’ I guess always will be.

Fifty per cent of the men that gets married

makes a mistake.

Why is that?

You’re a white man

an’ I’m a negro.

Your nationality don’t make no difference.

If I kill you

Everybody says:

“Henry Stephens, a negro, killed a white man.”

I got a little Indian blood in me

but that wouldn’t count.

Springfield is Abraham Lincoln’s town.

There’s only eight mines out of twenty

In Sangamon county

Where the white miners

Let a negro work.

If I buy a house right next to the Peabody mine