"Thee is welcome to S.," said the cheerful voice of Thomas Carpenter, as
Josiah Collins alighted, bringing with him his charge; "and is this the
little child thee wrote me about? I am heartily glad thee has rescued
her from that dreadful system!"
"Anna," said he, turning to his wife, who had just entered the room,
"here is our friend, Josiah Collins, and the little girl I told thee
about."
"I am glad thee has come," said Anna, "sit down and make thyself at
home. And this is the little girl thee wrote Thomas about. She is a
beautiful child," continued Anna, gazing admiringly at the child. "I
hope she will be contented. Does she fret about her mother?"
"Not much; she would sometimes ask, 'where is mamma?' But the ladies in
the cars were very kind to her, and she was quite at home with them. I
told them I was taking her North; that I thought the North would better
agree with her; and that it was not convenient for her mother to come on
just now. I was really amused with the attention she received from the
Southern ladies; knowing how they would have shrunk from such offices if
they had known that one drop of the outcast blood ran in her veins."
"Why, Josiah," said Anna, "I have always heard that there was more
prejudice against the colored people in the North than in the South.
There is a difference in the manifestations of this feeling, but I do
not think there is as much prejudice here as there. [Here?] we have a
prejudice which is [formed from?] traditional ideas. We see in many
parts of the North a very few of the colored people, and our impressions
of them have received their coloring more or less from what the
slaveholders have said of them."
"We have been taught that they are idle, improvident, and unfitted for
freedom, and incapable of progression; and when we see them in the
cities we see them overshadowed by wealth, enterprise, and activity, so
that our unfavorable impressions are too often confirmed. Still if one
of that class rises above this low mental condition, we know that there
are many who are willing to give such a one a healthy recognition."
"I know that there are those that have great obstacles to overcome, but
I think that while Southerners may have more personal likings for
certain favorite servants, they have stronger prejudices than even we
have, or if they have no more than we have, they have more
self-restraint, and show it more virulently."
"But I [think?] they do not seem to have any horror of personal
contact."
"Of course not; constant familiarity with the race has worn away all
sense of physical repulsion but there is a prejudice which ought to be
an American feeling; it is a prejudice against their rising in the scale
of humanity. A prejudice which virtually says you are down, and I mean
to keep you down. As a servant I tolerate you; you are useful as you are
valuable, but rise one step in the scale of being, and I am ready to put
you down. I see this in the treatment that the free colored people
receive in parts of the South; they seem to me to be the outcasts of an
outcast race. They are denied the right to walk in certain public places
accessible to every class unless they go as nurses, and are forbidden to
assemble in evening meetings, and forced to be in the house unless they
have passes, by an early hour in the night, and in fact they are
hampered or hemmed in on every side; subject to insults from any rude,
coarse or brutal white, and in case of outrages, denied their testimony.
Prejudiced as we are in Pennsylvania, we do not go that far."
"But, Josiah, we have much to blush for in Pennsylvania; colored people
are denied the privilege of riding in our street cars. Only last week
when I was in Philadelphia I saw a very decent-looking colored woman
with a child, who looked too feeble to walk, and the child too heavy for
her to carry. She beckoned to a conductor, but he swept by and took no
more heed of her than if she had been a dog. There was a young lady
sitting in the car, who remarked to her mother, as a very filthy-looking
white man entered, 'See, they will let that filthy creature ride and
prohibit a decent respectable colored person!' The mother quietly
assented.
"From her dress I took her to be a Quakeress, for she had a lovely dress
of dove-colored silk. The young lady had scarcely uttered the words when
a young man who sat next the mother deliberately arose, and beckoned to
the man with the sooty clothes to take his seat; but fortunately for the
Quakeress, a lady who was sitting next her daughter arose just at that
moment, and left the seat, and the old man without noticing the
manoeuvre passed over to the other side, and thus avoided the contact. I
was amused, however, about one thing; for the young man who gave up his
seat was compelled to ride about a mile standing."
"Served him right," said Thomas Carpenter; "it was a very contemptible
action, to attempt to punish the hardihood of the young lady by
attempting to soil her mother's dress; and yet little souls who feel a
morbid satisfaction in trampling on the weak, always sink themselves in
the scale of manhood."
While this conversation was going on, the tea bell rang, and Josiah and
his little charge sat down to a well supplied table; for the Friends,
though plain and economical, are no enemies to good living.
Anna had brought the high-chair in which their own darling had sat a few
months before, when she had made gladness and sunshine around her
parent's path.
There was a tender light in the eye of the Quakeress as she dusted the
chair, and sat Minnie at the table.
"Do you think," said Thomas, addressing Josiah, "that we will ever
outgrow this wicked, miserable prejudice?"
"Oh, yes, but it must be the work of time. Both races have their work to
do. The colored man must outgrow his old condition of things, and thus
create around him a new class of associations. This generation has known
him as a being landless, poor, and ignorant. One of the most important
things for him to do is to acquire land. He will never gain his full
measure of strength until (like Anteus) he touches the earth. And I think
here is the great fault, or misfortune of the race; they seem to me to
readily accept their situation, and not to let their industrial aspirations
rise high enough. I wish they had more of the earth hunger that
characterizes the German, or the concentration of purpose which we see
in the Jews."
"I think," said Thomas, "that the Jews and Negroes have one thing in
common, and that is their power of endurance. They, like the negro, have
lived upon an idea, and that is the hope of a deliverer yet to come; but
I think this characteristic more strongly developed in the Jews than in
the Negroes."
"Doubtless it is, but their origin and history have been different. The
Jews have a common ancestry and grand traditions, that have left alive
their pride of race. 'We have Abraham to our father,' they said, when
their necks were bowed beneath the Roman yoke."
"But I do not think the negro can trace with certainty his origin back
to any of the older civilizations, and here for more than two hundred
years his history has been a record of blood and tears, of ignorance,
degradation, and slavery. And when nominally free, prejudice has
assigned him the lowest positions and the humblest situations. I have
not much hope of their progress while they are enslaved in the South."
"Well, Josiah, I have faith enough in the ultimate triumph of our
principles to believe that slavery will bite the dust before long."
"I don't know, friend Carpenter; for the system is very strongly rooted
and grounded in the institutions of the land, and has entrenched itself
in the strongholds of Church and State, fashion, custom, and social
life. And yet when I was in the South, I saw on every hand a growing
differentiation towards the Government."
"Do you know, Josiah, that I have more hope from the madness and folly
of the South than I have from the wisdom and virtue of the North? I have
read too 'whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.'"