_Two of a Kind._
While Ensal was absent from the room Mr. Hostility had caught sight of a
book which he perceived was the work of a rather conspicuous Southern
man, who had set for himself the task of turning the entire Negro
population out of America. He clutched the book eagerly and said to
himself:
"I will further inflame the fellow with this venomous assault on his
race. I will further ripen his heart for my purposes."
Upon Ensal's return to the room, Mr. Hostility called his
attention to the book written for the express purpose of thoroughly
discrediting the Negro race in America. The militant look that came into
Ensal's eye pleased Mr. Hostility immensely. "I will get him! I will get
him!" thought he.
Ensal did not speak for some time, allowing his weary mind to go forth
upon excursions of thought begotten by the mention of the book. The
movement for which this book stood, constituted what Ensal regarded as
one of the most menacing phases of the problem of the relation of the
races. He knew that in the very nature of things a policy of
misrepresentation was the necessary concomitant of a policy of
repression. Now that the repressionists were invading the realm of
literature to ply their trade, he saw how that the Negro was to be
attacked in the quiet of the AMERICAN HOME, the final arbiter of so many
of earth's most momentous questions, and he trembled at the havoc vile
misrepresentations would play before the truth could get a hearing.
Ensal thought of the odds against the Negro in this literary battle: how
that Southern white people, being more extensive purchasers of books
than the Negroes, would have the natural bias of great publishing
agencies on their side; how that Northern white people, resident in the
South, for social and business reasons, might hesitate to father books
not in keeping with the prevailing sentiment of Southern white people;
how that residents of the North, who essayed to write in defense of the
Negro, were laughed out of school as mere theorists ignorant of actual
conditions; and, finally, how that a lack of leisure and the absence of
general culture handicapped the Negro in fighting his own battle in this
species of warfare.
At last Ensal discussed the book with such warmth that Mr. Hostility
greatly rejoiced. Leaning across the table, his fiery eyes glowing more
fiercely than ever, he almost shrieked:
"Friend, aside from that book, knowest thou not unto what the content of
the Southern policy is leading? Extinction, sir, extinction! Listen to
me awhile."
"One could hardly be more absorbed than I am at this moment," said
Ensal, rather glad of the warmth of the discussion that took his mind
somewhat away from his personal grief.
"The Southern white man, when it comes to you, is a believer in caste.
He believes or professes to believe that God, who created the worm and
the bird, also created the Negro and the white man, and that the gulf
between these respective orders of creations is just as wide in the one
case as in the other. Follow this caste idea to its last analysis. The
lower orders must give way to the higher. The mineral is absorbed into
the vegetable and we get the herb, the cow comes along and crops the
herb, the man comes along and eats the cow. The higher order is given
the power of life and death over the lower. Can't you see that your race
is simply preserved because it is not yet in the way of the white race?"
said Mr. Hostility.
"Proceed," said Ensal.
"Even now, when have you heard of a white man's being hanged for the
murder of a Negro, however cold-blooded the murder? Can't you see the
awful significance of that fact? Over seventy-five thousand Negroes have
been murdered in the South since your Civil War and I know of just one
hanging of a white as a result. Again, the worst houses to live in are
assigned to your people; the lower forms of labor, involving the most
exposure and danger to life, are reserved for your folks. Phosphate
mines and guano factories shorten human life wofully and your people are
sought for these 'life shortening' jobs. Mark my words," said Mr.
Hostility, rising and bending across the table, "when the Anglo-Saxon
feels the need of it, he is going to exterminate you folks. Theories to
the wind! When has a theory or sentiment of any kind been allowed to
stand in the way of his interests?"
"Well, what are we to do?" asked Ensal, anxious to draw the man out.
The man dropped back to his seat. "Now that's right," said he; "'Where
there is a will there is a way,' you Americans say." Reaching into his
vest pocket he pulled out a bottle which was hermetically sealed.
"There, there, lies your salvation," said he, tapping the bottle.
"How so?" enquired Ensal.
"This thing came to me like a revelation," said the man. "The way to
attack an enemy is to get at him where you can do him the most harm at
the least risk to yourself." A sinister smile now played upon the man's
face. "Your color is the thing that operates against you Negroes. You
can take what is your curse and make it your salvation."
The man was delighted with the interest that was plainly evident on
Ensal's face.
"Listen!" said he, bending forward and speaking in low tones. "The
pigment which abides in your skin and gives you your color and the
peculiar Negro odor renders you immune from yellow fever. This bottle
here is full of yellow fever germs. Organize you a band of trusted
Negroes, send them through the South, let them empty these germs into
the various reservoirs of the white people of the South and pollute the
water. The greatest scourge that the world has ever known will rage in
the South. The whites will die by the millions and those that do not die
will flee from the stricken land and leave the country to your people.
"The desolation wrought will for a time disorganize this whole nation
and the Pan-Slavists will have the more time to plan for the coming
struggle.
"My scheme helps you and helps the Pan-Slavist cause and disposes of a
common foe, a section of the white race. Of course, we will have you
Negroes to fight in the last contest. But you would prefer being the
ones living to make the fight, would you not?" asked the man, now
nervously awaiting Ensal's next words.
Ensal was silent for a few seconds. Then he asked slowly:
"Do you make that proposition to me, a follower of the Christ?"
"I have anticipated you there. Did not God use plagues and a wholesale
slaughter to solve the Egyptian race problem? Shall you be more
righteous than God?"
"Really would you, a civilized being, propose to me a course that
involves the wholesale destruction of women and innocent babes?" asked
Ensal with mounting wrath.
"Did not your God tell the Hebrews to wage a war of extermination on the
Canaanites?" asked the man.
Ensal arose and pointing his index finger at the man, said with a voice
vibrant with deep feeling:
"Now hear me a while. During the Civil War my race met the requirements
of honor where-ever the test was applied--whether it was in the test of
the soldier on the field of battle or the slave guarding the women and
children at home.
"Nor has freedom altered this trait of Negro character," continued
Ensal. "When discussion rages fiercest, Negro servants continue to abide
in white families, with no thought of leaving or of being dismissed.
Negro men sit in carriages by the side of the fairest daughters of the
Southland and take them in safety from place to place. The Negroes do
the cooking for the whites, nurse their babies, and our mothers hover
about the bedside of their dying. This they do while their hearts are
yearning for a better day for themselves and their kind. But the racial
honor is above being tainted. Let the Anglo-Saxon crush us if he will
and if there is no God! But I say to you, the Negro can never be
provoked to stoop to the perfidy and infamy which you suggest.
"And as for you, sir, I pronounce you the true yoke fellow of him about
whose book we have been talking, who, wearing the livery of the unifier
of the human race, smites the bridge of sympathy which the ages have
builded between man and man, who, inflamed racial egotist that he is,
would burn humanity at the stake for the sake of the glare that it would
cast upon the pathway of the one race. Is the issue clearly enough drawn
between us?"
Mr. Hostility nervously folded his map of the world, restored his bottle
of germs to his pocket, and stood facing Ensal in silence for a few
seconds, his keen disappointment adding to the uncanny look of his face.
"Remember, we have each other's secrets," said Mr. Hostility meaningly
in tones that showed his keen regret at the failure in this instance of
his long cherished scheme. This somewhat recalled Ensal to himself.
"Yes! Yes! Fear me not. I do not need to impose anything whatever
between your suggestion and our racial honor. That is simply
unapproachable from that quarter. For that reason I am not tempted to
repeat to others what you have said to me."
Thus reassured, Mr. Hostility made a bow of mock humility, directed at
Ensal a look of utter contempt, and disappeared.
Ensal dropped upon his knees and prayed thus:
"O Spirit eternal, God of our fathers, move thou upon the
hearts of the American people and bid them to lift thy children
of the darker hue from their 'low ground of sorrow,' where all
the evil influences of the world feel free to tempt them. In
all the dark night that may yet await them, when men shall so
beset them as to threaten the sustaining influence of
patriotism, grant from the dawn eternal the lighted taper of
hope that shall throw its beams athwart the darkness, and
furnish a cheering glimpse of the fair end of all things. Watch
with thine all seeing eye and nail with thine omnipotent hand
the machinations of those who would poison human hearts and
destroy the humane instincts that are the graces of our faulty
world. Abide thou here forever and grant that the post of pilot
of our planet be given unto this land unto which, though I
depart, my heart is moored by the sweat of brow, flowing blood
and anguish of spirit contributed by my ancestors. Grant unto
this prayer the full measure of consideration that can be
bestowed by divine will upon the heart pleadings of an earnest
humble soul."