It is with humiliation that I am forced to insist upon the same
equality in other public institutions of learning and science,--also in
churches, and in the last resting-places of the dead. So far as any of
these are public in character and organized by law, they must follow
the general requirement. How strange that any institution of learning
or science, any church, or any cemetery should set up a discrimination
so utterly inconsistent with correct principle! But I do not forget
that only recently a colored officer of the National Army was treated
with indignity at the communion-table. To insult the dead is easier,
although condemned by Christian precept and heathen example. As in
birth, so in death are all alike,--beginning with the same nakedness,
and ending in the same decay; nor do worms spare the white body
more than the black. This equal lot has been the frequent occasion
of sentiment and of poetry. Horace has pictured pallid Death with
impartial foot knocking at the cottages of the poor and the towers of
kings.[198] In the same spirit the early English poet, author of “Piers
Ploughman,” shows the lowly and the great in their common house:--
“For in charnel at chirche
Cherles ben yvel to knowe,
Or a knyght from a knave there.”[199]