I talked with him apart, where the storming
of the lusty young orators could not harm us. I spoke to him
politely, then curiously, then eagerly, as I began to feel the
fineness of his character,--his calm courtesy, the sweetness
of his strength, and his fair blending of the hope and truth of
life. Instinctively I bowed before this man, as one bows before
the prophets of the world. Some seer he seemed, that came
not from the crimson Past or the gray To-come, but from the
pulsing Now,--that mocking world which seemed to me at
once so light and dark, so splendid and sordid. Fourscore
years had he wandered in this same world of mine, within the
Veil.
He was born with the Missouri Compromise and lay a-dying
amid the echoes of Manila and El Caney: stirring times for
living, times dark to look back upon, darker to look forward
to. The black-faced lad that paused over his mud and marbles
seventy years ago saw puzzling vistas as he looked down the
world. The slave-ship still groaned across the Atlantic, faint
cries burdened the Southern breeze, and the great black father
whispered mad tales of cruelty into those young ears.
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