WALL, Josiah give up and crumpled down along the middle of the
forenoon, and he looked happy as a king after he give up his project
(it wuz only ambition that wuz a goarin’ him and a leadin’ him around).
And he and Snow (the darlin’!) had gone out a walkin’ in the grounds—
And I wuz a settin’ alone on the veranda by the side of Boy’s cradle,
Genieve havin’ gone to the village to get some thread—
When Victor come over on a errant. He come to bring a note over from
Mrs. Seybert to my daughter Maggie, and I told him I would give it to
her jest as soon as she returned and come back. She had gone out ridin’
with Thomas Jefferson.
And I, feelin’ kinder opset and mauger through what I had went through
with my pardner, thought it would sort o’ take up my mind and
recooperate me to talk a little with Victor (I had always liked him
from the first minute I see him).
And so at my request he sot down on the veranda, and we had a little
talk. I guess, too, he was dretful willin’ to talk with me, so’s to
sort to waste the time and linger till Genieve got back.
And before some time had passed away I turned the conversation onto
that skeme of hisen. I had hearn a sight about it first and last, and
kinder hankered to-day (for reasons given prior and beforehand) to hear
more.
And he went on perfectly eloquent about it—he couldn’t help gettin’
all worked up about it every time he got to talkin’ about it; and
yet he talked with good sound sense, and he see all the dangers and
difficulties in the way, and his mind wuz sot on the best way of
surmountin’ and gettin’ over ’em.
Genieve’s mind wuz such she naterelly looked so sort o’ high that she
couldn’t see much besides the sun-lit glorified mountains of the high
lands and the beauty of the Gole.
But Victor see the rough road that led down through rocky defiles and
through the deep wilderness; he see and counted all the lions that wuz
in the path between this and the Promised Land, and his hull mind wuz
sot on gettin’ by ’em and slayin’ ’em; but he heard their roars plain,
every one of ’em. The name of the two biggest lions that lay in the
road ahead of him a roarin’ at him wuz Ignorance and Greed.
One of ’em had black skin, black as a coal, and the other wuz
light-complected.
How to get by them lions wuz his first thought, for they lay watchin’
every move he made at the very beginnin’ of the road that led out to
Canaan.
The animal Ignorance wuz too gross and heavy and sensual to even try to
get out of the path where it must have known it wuz in danger of bein’
crushed to death and trampled down; it wuz too thick-headed to even
lift its eyes and look off into a more sun-lighted place; it lay there,
down in the dark mud, as heavy, as lifeless, as filthy as the dark soil
in which it crouched.
Its huge black form filled up the way; how could Victor and them like
him lift it up, put life and ambition in its big, heavy carcass, and
make it move off and let the hosts go forward?
The beast Greed lifted its long neck and fastened its fiery eyes on
Victor and his peers, and its mighty arms, tipped with a thousand sharp
claws and talons, wuz lifted up to keep them back—force them back into
the prison pens of servitude.
Victor see all this that Genieve couldn’t see, not bein’ made in that
way; he see it, but, like Christian in his march to the Beautiful City,
he wuz determined to press forward.
And as I sot there and looked at him and hearn him talk, I declare
for’t I got all rousted up myself with his project, and I felt ready,
and told him so, to help him all I could consistently with my duties as
a pardner and a member of the Methodist meetin’ house.
And as I hearn him talk, I seemed to be riz up more and more, and able
to see further than I had seen, and I felt a feelin’ that Victor wuz in
the right on’t. I thought back on how eloquent Maggie and I had growed
on the race question, and I felt that I wouldn’t take it back. No; I
had spoke my mind as things seemed to me then, and if the two races
wuz goin’ to be sot down together side by side, I felt that the idees
we had promulgated to each other wuz right idees; but the more Victor
talked the more I felt that his idees wuz right to separate the two
races, if it wuz possible to do it.
His talk made a deep impression onto me, and I went on in my mind and
drew some metafors further, it seemed to me, than I had ever drawed
any, and eppisoded to myself more eloquent than I had ever eppisoded.
I hain’t one to go half way into any undertakin’, and I made up my mind
then and there that if Victor and Genieve married and sot off for this
colony in Africa, that I would set ’em out with a bushel of my best
dried apples, and mebby more. And some dried peaches, and a dozen of
them pans—I thought they would come handy in Africa to ketch cocoanut
milk, or sunthin’.
And I said I would give ’em a couple of hens in welcome, and a male hen
and a pair of ducks, if he spozed he would get water enough to keep ’em
contented. Somehow I kep’ thinkin’ of the Desert of Sarah—I couldn’t
seem to keep Sarah out of my mind.
But he said there wuz plenty of water where they wuz goin’. And he sot
and promulgated his idees to me for some time. And I looked on him with
admiration and a considerable amount of deep respect.
He wuz a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome fellow, with very courteous,
winnin’ manners.
He had a clear-cut, resolute face, and silky brown hair that fell down
over a broad white forwerd, and a mustache of the same color.
His eyes would fairly melt sometimes, and be soft as a woman’s, and
then agin they would look you through and through and seem to be
piercin’ through the hull dark path ahead out into the light of safety.
And his lips, that wuz resolute and firm enough sometimes, could anon,
or oftener, grow tremulous with feelin’ and eloquence.
He wuz a earnest Christian, a professor of religion, and, what is fur
better, a practicer of the same.
He give his idees to me in full that day in confidence (and a desire to
linger till Genieve got back).
Some of these idees he got from Genieve, some on ’em he learned from
books, and kindred minds, and close observation, and remembrance of
talks he had hearn when such things sunk deep in his heart, and some on
’em sprung up from seeds God had planted in his soul, onbeknown to him;
in a woman we call it intuition.
But anyway, no matter by what name we call these seeds, they lay in the
soul till the Sun of Occasion warms ’em into life, and then they open
their star flowers and find the way to the Right and the True.
To Victor the welfare of his mother’s people lay nearer to his heart
than even Genieve, much as he loved her—than his own life, sacred as
he held it, holding, as he believed it did, a mission for humanity.
It wuz his idee to transplant the Africans to some place where they
could live out their full lives without interference or meddlin’ with
from another people, that must, in the nature of things, be always an
alien race and one opposed to the black race instinctively and beyend
remedy.
I see jest how it wuz; I see that nobody, no matter how strong you
should fix the medicine and how powerful the doses you might give,
could cure this distemper, this instinctive, deep-rooted feelin’ of
antipathy and repulsion towards the negro.
I see that no amount of pills and plasters wuz a goin’ to make the
negro feel free and easy with the white race.
There is a deep-rooted difference of opinion, and difference of
feelin’, difference of aims, and desires, and everything between the
two races.
It is as deep down as creation, and as endless as eternity, and can’t
be doctored, or tackled up in any way and made to jine and become one.
It can’t be did, so there is no use in tryin’.
And any amount of flowery speeches or proclamations, or enactments, or
anything, hain’t a goin’ to amalgamate the two races and make ’em blend
into another and be a hull one.
No; a law may contain every big law word, and “to wit” and “be it
enacted” and every clause that ever wuz claused, and every amendment
that wuz ever amended, but it hain’t a goin’ to make any difference
with this law that wuz made in a higher court than any they have in
Washington, D. C.
And a speech may contain the hull floral tribe, all the flowers that
wuz ever heard on; it may soar up in eloquence as fur up as anybody can
go, and dwindle down into pathos as deep as ever wuz went.
But it is a goin’ to blow over the subject jest like any whiff of wind;
it hain’t a goin’ to do the job of makin’ the two races come any nigher
to each other.
Why, you see when anybody is a tryin’ to do this, he hain’t a fightin’
aginst flesh and blood only, the real black and white flesh of the
present, but he is a fightin’ aginst principalities and powers, the
powers of the long kingdom of the past, the viewless but unfightable
principalities of long centuries of concentrated opinions and
hereditary influences, the ingrained contempt and scorn of the superior
race towards the inferior in any other condition only servitude—the
inbred feelin’s of slavery, of lookin’ up with a blended humility and
hatred, admiration and envy, into the face of the dominant race.
The race difference lays like a gulf between the two people. You can’t
step over it, your legs hain’t long enough; you can’t bridge it over,
there hain’t no boards to be found strong enough; there it yawns, a
deep gulf, and always will between the two races.
And when the Nation expected to jine these two forces and hitch ’em
side by side to the car of freedom by a piece of paper with writin’ on
it, expectin’ they would draw it along easy and stiddy, that wuz the
time the Nation wuz a fool.
It would be jest as reasonable to hitch a wild lion from the jungles by
the side of a sheep, and set ’em to drawin’ the milk to the factory.
They might expect that if the team got to the factory at all, the sheep
would be inside of the lion, and the milk too.
It won’t do no good to go too hard aginst Nater. She is one, Nater is,
that can’t be went aginst not with any safety.
Mebby after centuries of trainin’ and education, the lion might be
learnt to trot along by the side of the sheep and dump the milk out all
right at the factory door. But centuries after this had been done, the
same instinctive race war would be a goin’ on between the black people
and the white.
You cannot make a soap-stun into a runnin’ vine, or a flat-iron blossom
out with dewy roses, or a thistle bear pound sweet apples—it can’t be
done, no matter how hard you work, or how pure your motives are.
So these things bein’ settled and positive, Victor thought—and I’ll be
hanged if I could blame him for thinkin’—that the sooner his people
got into a place of their own, away from the white race that had
fettered them, and they had fettered so long, the better it would be
for them.
He reasoned it out like this: “The Anglo-Saxons wuz here before we wuz,
and they are a powerful nation of their own. They won’t go; so what
remains but to take ourselves away, and the sooner the better,” he
thought.
He had read, as I said, many books on the subject; but of all the books
he had read, Stanley’s description of some parts of Africa pleased him
best.
He shrank from takin’ his people into a colder climate; he had read
long and elaborate arguments as to what cold wuz to do in changin’ and
improvin’ the African.
But his common sense taught him that the Lord knew better than the
authors of these tracts as to what climate wuz best for His people.
He felt that it wuz useless to graft a pomegranate or a banana bush
onto the North Pole. He felt that it wouldn’t do the pole any good, and
the grafts would freeze up and drop off—why, they would have to, they
couldn’t help it, and the pole couldn’t help it either—the pole had to
be froze, it wuz made so.
So he never had favored the colonization of his race in the colder
Western States.
Nor had he quite liked the idee of their findin’ a new home in the far
South or in South America.
They would be still in an alien land, alien races would press clost
aginst ’em.
No, a home in Africa pleased him best—in that land the Lord had placed
the black people—it wuz their home accordin’ to all the laws of God
and man.
And if it hadn’t been the best place for ’em, if they hadn’t been
fitted by nater for that climate, why he reasoned it out that they
wouldn’t have been born there in the first place.
He didn’t believe God had made a mistake; he didn’t believe He could.
Why, way down in the dark earth there never wuz known to be any mistake
made, a wheat seed never sprung up into a cowcumber, a lily seed never
blowed out into a daffodil.
No, there seemed to be a eternal law that prevented all mistakes and
blunders.
And havin’ sot down the black man in Africa, Victor felt that it wuz
pretty sure to be the right and best place for him.
Stanley said that there wuz room enough in one section of the Upper
Congo basin to locate double the number of negroes in the United
States, without disturbin’ a single tribe that now inhabits it; that
every one of these seven million negroes might become owner of nearly
a quarter square mile of land. Five acres of this planted with bananas
and plantains would furnish every soul with sufficient food and drink.
The remainder of the twenty-seven acres of his estate would furnish him
with timber, rubber, gums, dye stuffs, etc., for sale.
There is a clear stream every few hundred yards, the climate is healthy
and agreeable.
Eight navigable rivers course through it. Hills and ridges diversify
the scenery and give magnificent prospects.
To the negroes of the South it would be a reminder of their own
plantations without the swamps and depressin’ influence of cypress
forests.
Anything and everything might be grown in it, from the oranges, guavas,
sugar-cane and cotton of sub-tropical lands, to the wheat of California
and the rice of South Carolina.
If the emigration wuz prudently conceived and carried out, the glowin’
accounts sent home by the first settlers would soon dissipate all fear
and reluctance on the part of the others.
But to make this available, it would have to be undertaken at once,
says Stanley. For if it hain’t taken advantage of by the American
negro, the railways towards that favored land will be constructed,
steamers will float on the Congo, and the beautiful forest land will
be closed to such emigration by the rule, first come first served.
And then this beautiful, hopeful chance will be lost forever.
Victor read this, and more, from Stanley’s pen, and felt deeply the
beautiful reasonableness of the skeme.
With all the eloquence of which he wuz master he tried to bring these
facts home to his people, and tried to arouse in them something of his
own enthusiasm.
As for himself he wuz bound to go—as teacher, as missionary, as
leader—as soon as he could; his mother’s health wuz failing—his
unhappy mistress needed him sorely—his preparations wuz not all
completed yet.
There wuz several hundred young, intelligent negroes, most of them with
families, who wuz workin’ hard to get the money Victor thought would be
necessary for a successful venture.
For besides the cost of transportation, Victor wanted them to be
placed beyend the possibility of sufferin’ and hardship while they wuz
preparin’ their land for cultivation.
But I sez, “Most probable this Nation will fit out some ships and carry
you back to your old home.” Sez I, “More than probable Uncle Sam will
be glad of the chance to pay some of his debts, and clear the slate
that hangs up behind the Capitol door, of one of the worst and meanest
debts it ever had ciphered out on it, and held up aginst him.”
But Victor smiled ruther sadly and looked dubersome.
He thought after the colony there wuz a assured success, thousands
and thousands would go with their own money and help poorer ones to
new homes there; but he didn’t seem to put much dependence on Uncle
Samuel’s ever hitchin’ up his steamships and carryin’ ’em over.
But I sez real warmly, for I cannot bear any animyversions aginst that
poor old man (only what I make myself in the cause of Duty)—sez I,
“You wrong Uncle Samuel;” sez I, “You’ll find out that he will brace
up and do the right thing if the case is presented to him in the right
light, and he brings his spectacles to bear on it.
“Why,” sez I, “if I borry a cup of tea of Miss Gowdey, do I spoze
that she will trapise over to my house after it?—and the same with
flat-irons, pressboards, bluin’ bags, etc.
“No, I carry ’em back agin, honorable.
“And if Josiah Allen borrys a plough or a fannin’ mill, do you spoze
he expects the neighborin’ men he borrys ’em of to harness up and come
after ’em? No, he carries ’em back.
“And how much more would he feel obligated if he had stole ’em, and me
too; why we should expect to carry ’em back, or else get shot up, and
good enough for us.
“Now,” sez I, “you and your people wuz stole from Africa by Uncle
Samuel, or, I don’t spoze the old man did the stealin’ with his own
hands, but he stood by and see it done and winked at it, and allowed
it; and so, he is responsible, bein’ the head of the family.
[Illustration: DEACON HUFFER.]
“And if that old man ever calculates to make any appearance at all
before the nations of the earth, if he ever calculates to neighbor with
’em to any advantage, he will jest carry them stolen creeters back and
put ’em down onharmed on the sile he dragged ’em from.
“Good land! it won’t be no job for him; it won’t be no more for him
than it would for my companion to take back a hen he had borryed from
Deacon Huffer up to Zoar—or stole from him, I spoze I ort to say, in
order to carry out the metafor as metafors ort to be carried.”
I sez this in a real enthusiastic axent, and a very friendly one too
towards Uncle Samuel; for I love that noble-minded but sometimes
misguided old creeter—I love him dearly.
But Victor smiled agin that sort of a amused smile, and yet a sort of a
sad one too. And sez he:
“I am afraid this Nation has not got your sense of honor.”
He couldn’t help, I see, a kinder wishin’ that the Government would
brace up and take over a few cargoes of ’em.
But he wuz dubersome.
But anyway he wuz bound they should get there some way. And I had a
feelin’, as I looked at him, that the dark waves in front of him would
part some way, and he would pass over into the light, he and his race.
Wall, jest about as he finished up his idees to me, Genieve come in
lookin’ as pretty as a pink, and I got up and carried the thread
into the house, willin’ to leave ’em alone for a little while, and I
spoze—I spoze they wuz willin’ to have me go.
Yes, I hadn’t forgot what courtship wuz, when Josiah Allen come over to
see me, sheepish but affectionate.
And I remember well how he would brighten up when Mother Smith would be
obleeged to go out to get supper, or to strain the milk, or sunthin’ or
other.
No, I hain’t forgot it, and most probable never shall.
[Illustration: “UNDER THE WHITE CROSS.”]