MOTES IN THE SUNSHINE.
Mollie Ainslie's third year of teacher's life was drawing near its
close. She had promised her brother to remain at the South during
that time in order that she might escape the perils of their native
climate. She was of vigorous constitution but of slight build, and
he dreaded lest the inherited scourge should take an ineradicable
hold upon her system. She had passed her school-girl life with safety;
but he rightly judged that a few years in the genial climate where
she then was would do very much toward enabling her to resist the
approaches of disease.
The work in which she had been engaged had demanded all her energies
and commanded all her devotion. Commencing with the simplest of
rudimentary training she had carried some of her pupils along until
a fair English education had been achieved. One of these pupils
had already taken the place vacated a few months before by Lucy
Ellison, since which time Mollie had occupied alone the north
rooms of the old hostelry--a colored family who occupied the other
portion serving as protectors, and bringing her meals to her own
apartments. A friend had spent a portion of this time with her, a
schoolmate whose failing health attested the wisdom of the condition
her dying brother had imposed in regard to herself. As the warm
weather approached this friend had returned to her New England
home, and Mollie Ainslie found herself counting the days when she
might also take her flight.
Her work had not grown uninteresting, nor had she lost any of her
zeal for the unfortunate race she had striven to uplift; but her
heart was sick of the terrible isolation that her position forced
upon her. She had never once thought of making companions, in
the ordinary sense, of those for whom she labored. They had been
so entirely foreign to her early life that, while she labored
unremittingly for their advancement and entertained for many of
them the most affectionate regard, there was never any inclination
to that friendly intimacy which would have been sure to arise if
her pupils had been of the same race as herself. She recognized
their right most fully to careful and polite consideration; she
had striven to cultivate among them gentility of deportment; but
she had longed with a hungry yearning for friendly white faces,
and the warm hands and hearts of friendly associates.
Her chief recreation in this impalpable loneliness--this Chillon
of the heart in which she had been bound so long--was in daily
rides upon her horse, Midnight. Even in her New England home she
had been passionately fond of a horse, and while at school had been
carefully trained in horsemanship, being a prime favorite with the
old French riding-master who had charge of that branch of education
in the seminary of her native town. Midnight, coming to her from
the dying hand of her only brother, had been to her a sacred trust
and a pet of priceless value. All her pride and care had centered
upon him, and never had horse received more devoted attention. As
a result, horse and rider had become very deeply attached to each
other. Each knew and appreciated the other's good qualities and
varying moods. For many months the petted animal had shown none
of that savageness with which his owner had before been compelled
occasionally to struggle. He had grown sleek and round, but had
lost his viciousness, so far as she was concerned, and obeyed her
lightest word and gesture with a readiness that had made him a subject
of comment in the country around, where the "Yankee school-marm"
and her black horse had become somewhat noted.
There was one road that had always been a favorite with the horse
from the very first. Whenever he struck that he pressed steadily
forward, turning neither to the right or left until he came to a
rocky ford five miles below, which his rider had never permitted
him to cross, but from which he was always turned back with
difficulty--at first with a troublesome display of temper, and at
the last, with evident reluctance.
It was in one of her most lonely moods, soon after the incidents
we have just narrated, that Mollie Ainslie set out on one of her
customary rides. In addition to the depression which was incident
to her own situation, she was also not a little disturbed by the
untoward occurrences affecting those for whom she had labored so
long. She had never speculated much in regard to the future of the
freedmen, because she had considered it as assured. Growing to
womanhood in the glare of patriotic warfare, she had the utmost
faith in her country's honor and power. To her undiscriminating
mind the mere fact that this honor and power were pledged to the
protection and elevation of the negro had been an all-sufficient
guarantee of the accomplishment of that pledge. In fact, to her
mind, it had taken on the reality and certainty of a fact already
accomplished. She had looked forward to their prosperity as an
event not to be doubted. In her view Nimbus and Eliab Hill were
but feeble types of what the race would "in a few brief years"
accomplish for itself. She believed that the prejudice that prevailed
against the autonomy of the colored people would be suppressed,
or prevented from harmful action by the national power, until the
development of the blacks should have shown them to be of such
value in the community that the old-time antipathy would find itself
without food to exist upon longer.
She had looked always upon the rosy side, because to her the country
for which her brother and his fellows had fought and died was the
fairest and brightest thing upon earth. There might be spots upon
the sun's face, but none were possible upon her country's escutcheon.
So she had dreamed and had fondly pictured herself as doing both a
patriot's and a Christian's duty in the work in which she had been
engaged. She felt less of anger and apprehension with regard to
the bitter and scornful whites than of pity and contempt for them,
because they could not appreciate the beauty and grandeur of the
Nation of which they were an unwilling part, and of the future
that lay just before. She regarded all there had been of violence
and hate as the mere puerile spitefulness of a subjugated people.
She had never analyzed their condition or dreamed that they would
ever be recognized as a power which might prove dangerous either
to the freedman's rights or to the Nation itself.
The recent events had opened her eyes. She found that, unknown to
herself, knowledge had forced itself upon her mind. As by a flash
the fact stood revealed to her consciousness that the colored man
stood alone. The Nation had withdrawn its arm. The flag still waved
over him, but it was only as a symbol of sovereignty renounced--of
power discarded. Naked privileges had been conferred, but the right
to enforce their recognition had been abandoned. The weakness and
poverty of the recent slave was pitted alone and unaided against the
wealth and power and knowledge of the master. It was a revelation
of her own thought to herself, and she was stunned and crushed by
it.
She was no statesman, and did not comprehend anything of those
grand policies whose requirements over-balance all considerations
of individual right--in comparison with which races and nations
are but sands upon the shore of Time. She little realized how grand
a necessity lay at the back of that movement which seemed to her
so heartless and inexcusable. She knew, of course, vaguely and
weakly, that the Fathers made a Constitution on which our government
was based. She did not quite understand its nature, which was very
strange, since she had often heard it expounded, and as a matter
of duty had read with care several of those books which tell us
all about it.
She had heard it called by various names in her far New England
home by men whom she loved and venerated, and whose wisdom and
patriotism she could not doubt. They had called it "a matchless
inspiration" and "a mass of compromises;" "the charter of liberty"
and "a league with Hell;" "the tocsin of liberty" and "the manacle
of the slave." She felt quite sure that nobler-minded, braver-hearted
men than those who used these words had never lived, yet she could
not understand the thing of which they spoke so positively and so
passionately. She did not question the wisdom or the patriotism of
the Fathers who had propounded this enigma. She thought they did
the best they knew, and knew the best that was at that time to be
known.
She had never _quite_ believed them to be inspired, and she
was sure they had no models to work after. Greece and Rome were
not republics in the sense of our day, and in their expanded growth
did not profess to be, at any time; Switzerland and San Marino
were too limited in extent to afford any valuable examples; Venice
while professedly a republic had been as unique and inimitable as
her own island home. Then there were a few experiments here and
there, tentative movements barren of results, and that was all that
the civilized world had to offer of practical knowledge of democracy
at that time. Beyond this were the speculations of philosophers
and the dreams of poets. Or perhaps the terms should be reversed,
for the dreams were oft-times more real and consistent than the
lucubrations. From these she did not doubt that our ancient sages
took all the wisdom they could gather and commingled it with the
riper knowledge of their own harsh experience.
But yet she could not worship the outcome. She knew that Franklin
was a great man and had studied electricity very profoundly, for
his day; but there are ten thousand unnoted operators to-day who
know more of its properties, power and management than he ever
dreamed of. She did not know but it might be so with regard to free
government. The silly creature did not know that while the world
moves in all things else, it stands still or goes backward in
governmental affairs. She never once thought that while in science
and religion humanity is making stupendous strides, in government
as in art, it turns ever to the model of the antique and approves
the wisdom only of the ancient.
So it was that she understood nothing of the sacredness of right
which attaches to that impalpable and indestructible thing, a State
of the American Union--that immortal product of mortal wisdom, that
creature which is greater than its creator, that part which is more
than the whole, that servant which is lord and master also. If she
had been given to metaphysical researches, she would have found
much pleasure in tracing the queer involutions of that network of
wisdom that our forefathers devised, which their sons have labored
to explain, and of which the sword had already cut some of the
more difficult knots. Not being a statesman or a philosopher, she
could only wonder and grow sad in contemplating the future that
she saw impending over those for whom she had labored so long.