Why should it not be?
He was black: but a black man's money passed current as well as a white man's.

Might not his name, Scipio Johnson, stand some day and be remembered as well as that of Joshua Milliton, A.M.

(whatever A.M.

might mean), who in 1714 had bequeathed moneys to provide, every Whit-Sunday and Christmas, "twelve white loaves of half a peck to as many virtuous poor widows"?
So when Miss Marty confided the news to him in the pantry where, as always at ten in the morning, he was engaged in cleaning the plate, Scipio's hand shook so violently that the silver sugar-basin slipped from his hold and, crashing down upon the breakfast-tray, broke two cups and the slop-basin into small fragments.
"Oh, Scipio!" Miss Marty's two hands went up in horrified dismay.
"How could you be so careless!" "The Millennium, miss!" "We can never replace it--never!" Scipio gazed at the tray: but what he saw was a shattered dream--a cracked board strewn with fragmentary scarlet letters and flourishes, "brief flourishes."-- "Ole man Satan is among us sho 'nuff, Miss Marty: among us and kickin' up Saint's Delight, because his time is short.

I was jes' thinkin' of the widows, miss." "You have spoilt the set.