The busy city
dinned about us; they did not say much, those pale-faced
hurrying men and women; they did not say much,--they
only glanced and said, "Niggers!"
We could not lay him in the ground there in Georgia, for
the earth there is strangely red; so we bore him away to the
northward, with his flowers and his little folded hands. In
vain, in vain!--for where, O God! beneath thy broad blue sky
shall my dark baby rest in peace,--where Reverence dwells,
and Goodness, and a Freedom that is free?
All that day and all that night there sat an awful gladness in
my heart,--nay, blame me not if I see the world thus darkly
through the Veil,--and my soul whispers ever to me saying,
"Not dead, not dead, but escaped; not bond, but free." No
bitter meanness now shall sicken his baby heart till it die a
living death, no taunt shall madden his happy boyhood. Fool
that I was to think or wish that this little soul should grow
choked and deformed within the Veil! I might have known
that yonder deep unworldly look that ever and anon floated
past his eyes was peering far beyond this narrow Now. In the
poise of his little curl-crowned head did there not sit all that
wild pride of being which his father had hardly crushed in his
own heart? For what, forsooth, shall a Negro want with pride
amid the studied humiliations of fifty million fellows? Well
sped, my boy, before the world had dubbed your ambition
insolence, had held your ideals unattainable, and taught you
to cringe and bow.
Pages:
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283