The centre of this spiritual turmoil has ever been the mil-
lions of black freedmen and their sons, whose destiny is so
fatefully bound up with that of the nation. And yet the casual
observer visiting the South sees at first little of this. He notes
the growing frequency of dark faces as he rides along,--but
otherwise the days slip lazily on, the sun shines, and this little
world seems as happy and contented as other worlds he has
visited. Indeed, on the question of questions--the Negro
problem--he hears so little that there almost seems to be a
conspiracy of silence; the morning papers seldom mention it,
and then usually in a far-fetched academic way, and indeed
almost every one seems to forget and ignore the darker half of
the land, until the astonished visitor is inclined to ask if after
all there IS any problem here. But if he lingers long enough
there comes the awakening: perhaps in a sudden whirl of
passion which leaves him gasping at its bitter intensity; more
likely in a gradually dawning sense of things he had not at
first noticed. Slowly but surely his eyes begin to catch the
shadows of the color-line: here he meets crowds of Negroes
and whites; then he is suddenly aware that he cannot discover
a single dark face; or again at the close of a day's wandering
he may find himself in some strange assembly, where all
faces are tinged brown or black, and where he has the vague,
uncomfortable feeling of the stranger.
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