A RIDE WITH IRENE
Soon after this talk Miss Davis and I visited prominent places in
the city of Phœnix. I had anxiously waited for this opportunity. An
uncontrollable desire to fulfill this engagement had grown on me, from
the day she informed me that she had planned the outing. We visited
McPherson’s monument, and standing with head uncovered in its shadow, I
said that I was glad to see that the cause he fought for was recognized
as a blessing to the South as well as to the North. She replied that
some of her relatives perished in defense of the South, but she had
been often told by her father that her ancestors considered slavery a
great wrong and liberated their slaves by will.
“In fact,” she remarked with womanly intuition, “I can see no reason
for their having had slaves at the outset. Why couldn’t the Negroes
have served us, from the first, as _freemen_, just as they did after
their emancipation? What was the necessity for adopting a system that
gave a chance for the brutal passions of bad men to vent themselves?
The whole country has suffered in its moral tone because of slavery,
and we are not as pure minded a nation to-day as we should have been
without it.”
I replied that it was commercialism that fixed slavery in the nation
and rooted and grounded it so deep that scarcely could it be eradicated
without destroying the nation itself. I noticed that she had none of
the Southern woman’s prejudice against “Yankees,” so prevalent in my
day, and that she was far enough removed from the events of the Civil
War to look at them dispassionately.
What a difference doth time make in people and nations. What is wisdom
to-day may be the grossest folly to-morrow, and the popular theme of
to-day maybe ridiculed later on. Ye “men of the hour” beware! The much
despised Yankee has taught the South many lessons in industry, in the
arts, sciences and literature, but none more valuable to her than to
forsake her prejudice against the evolution of the Negro.
We rode out to Chattahoochee farm, noted for its picturesqueness
and “up-to-dateness,” a paying institution entirely under the
management of Negroes. The superintendent was a graduate from the State
Agricultural College for Negroes, near Savannah.
“Are there any other farms of this kind in the state under Negro
management,” I asked.
She replied that there were many, that a majority of the landowners of
the state had found it profitable to turn vast tracts of land over to
these young Negro graduates, who were proving themselves adepts in the
art of scientific farming, making excellent salaries, and returning
good dividends on the investments.
I remarked that I used to wonder why this could not be done with the
young Negroes coming out from such schools--since their ante-bellum
fathers were so successful in this line--and I further said that this
movement might have been inaugurated in my day, but for the opposition
of the politicians, who approached the Negro question generally with no
sincere desire to get effective results, but to make political capital
for themselves.
She at once suggested, “And so you believe it was a good idea then to
dispense with the politicians?”
“Indeed,” said I, “they were horrible stumps in the road of progress.”
We ended our ride after a visit to the park, which was a beautiful
spot. It served not only as a place of recreation, but Musical,
Zoölogical, Botanical and Aquarian departments were open to the public,
and free lectures were given on the latest inventions and improvements,
thus coupling information with recreation, and elevating the thoughts
and ideas of the people. I noticed the absence of the old time signs
which I had heard once decorated the gates of this park, “Negroes
and dogs not allowed.” Of course Irene had never seen or heard of
such a thing and I therefore did not mention my thoughts to her. She
was a creature of the new era and knew the past only from books and
tradition. I had the misfortune, or pleasure, as the case may be, of
having lived in two ages and incidents of the past would continually
rise before me in comparison with the present.
On reaching my room that evening I felt that my trip with Miss Davis
had been very agreeable and very instructive, but still there was an
aching void--for what I did not know. Was it that we did not converse
on some desired subject?