Few know of these problems, few who
know notice them; and yet there they are, awaiting student,
artist, and seer,- -a field for somebody sometime to discover.
Hither has the temptation of Hippomenes penetrated; already
in this smaller world, which now indirectly and anon directly
must influence the larger for good or ill, the habit is forming
of interpreting the world in dollars. The old leaders of Negro
opinion, in the little groups where there is a Negro social
consciousness, are being replaced by new; neither the black
preacher nor the black teacher leads as he did two decades
ago. Into their places are pushing the farmers and gardeners,
the well-paid porters and artisans, the business-men,--all
those with property and money. And with all this change, so
curiously parallel to that of the Other-world, goes too the
same inevitable change in ideals. The South laments to-day
the slow, steady disappearance of a certain type of Negro,
--the faithful, courteous slave of other days, with his incor-
ruptible honesty and dignified humility. He is passing away
just as surely as the old type of Southern gentleman is passing,
and from not dissimilar causes,--the sudden transformation
of a fair far-off ideal of Freedom into the hard reality of
bread-winning and the consequent deification of Bread.
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