Why was his hair
tinted with gold? An evil omen was golden hair in my life.
Why had not the brown of his eyes crushed out and killed the
blue?--for brown were his father's eyes, and his father's
father's. And thus in the Land of the Color-line I saw, as it
fell across my baby, the shadow of the Veil.
Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall
he live,--a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little
head--ah, bitterly!--he unbowed pride of a hunted race,
clinging with that tiny dimpled hand--ah, wearily!--to a hope
not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright
wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom
is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie. I saw the shadow
of the Veil as it passed over my baby, I saw the cold city
towering above the blood-red land. I held my face beside his
little cheek, showed him the star-children and the twinkling
lights as they began to flash, and stilled with an even-song
the unvoiced terror of my life.
So sturdy and masterful he grew, so filled with bubbling
life, so tremulous with the unspoken wisdom of a life but
eighteen months distant from the All-life,--we were not far
from worshipping this revelation of the divine, my wife and
I.
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