EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE
DR. LEYDEN SUMS UP
AH, yes," said Leyden, "it is horribly pathetic; horribly! To me the whole race is pathetic wherever it has been brought into contact with ours. The pity of it; the pathos, the infinite pathos of the negro! Poor, dazed, bewildered black! dragged from the dark shadows of an African forest, loaded with chains, lashed through generations of slavery, and then—his shackles are knocked free; he is endowed at once with a soul, a voice, a vote; told to be civilized! Can we wonder that he grows bewildered?
"Mark him, my friends, this pure-bred African. It is seldom that you see him, but when you do, eliminate him from his fellows of semi-caste and scrutinize him closely. See! He is offended … scowls … mutters … looks murderous and is murderous, there is no doubt. His antagonist makes a jest. Like a flash his anger is whipped away; he grins sheepishly, more broadly, and with a flash of his white teeth; the other man is a funny fellow. He says something droll, and lo! our murderer of a minute past giggles, shouts with laughter, throws himself upon the ground, and rolls over and over in a paroxysm of mirth.
"But now, mark him as he rises! A woman working near him says a jeering word; he jeers in return, but half-heartedly, because he has learned to fear the sharp tongue of the sex. The other women jeer at him in chorus, even as they pound the clothes which they are cleansing. Our negro rallies his repartee, is jeered again, loses his grip, turns away sulkily. The jeers follow him, when suddenly he burst into tears and flings away!
"Yet he has his moments of exaltation, periods when he is sublime. A child is sometimes sublime, but this sublimity of the negro is rather that of the faithful dog. He will live for a loved master; toil for him; die for him. With this master he knows no fear, no evil; without him he is a rudderless vessel.
"This negro of ours has no master, no rudder; he cannot sail a straight course in waters which are strange to him. He is a creature of impulse, the shuttlecock of his emotions, lazy, improvident, lacking in imagination, which he substitutes with fantasy; he is irrepressible, incomplete. Yet he has a vote, a citizenship; he must obey the laws of the land or receive his punishment!
"Now mark him when confronted with a problem. Ah, that is pathetic, absurdly pathetic! See his doubt, his uncertainty, his bewilderment. He has been sold a house, a boat, a horse and cart, on easy payments, with usurious interest. What does he know of interest? His imagination can scarcely carry him beyond the period of his next sleep! See him wrinkle his brow, scratch his woolly head, appeal blindly to a black friend, who, flattered and with no more knowledge than the asker, gives him childishly absurd advice! My word! There should be founded in this great nation, whose first instinct is fairness, a Society for the Prevention of Swindling of Negroes! It is so pathetic! He is so hopelessly out of his place; so lost, bewildered, dazed, blinded by the light of a glittering white world!
"And the remedy? There can be in the nature of things no immediate remedy, for the only true remedy is time—time and infinite patience. The negro must be led upward, step by step, in the clear light of religion and education. He is from us a thing apart, a brother perhaps, but an infant brother, and as such I do not think that he is entitled to a seat in the conference of those of us who are his seniors in evolution. He is our care, our responsibility, and our racial inferior. In this great country of light, these things are coming to be known; the halls of learning are open to him, he is kindly entreated to enter and hear Truth; and that sweet religion which has been from its birth the greatest civilizing influence in the history of the world is imparted to him by wise lips.
"And the mulatto with these others who by virtue of fractional quantities of negro blood still dwell in the shadow? Once before, if you remember, I offended your sense of fitness by advocating the washing out of the yellow with the white. This is constantly being done, but not fairly, because the offspring of immorality come into the world with a heavy handicap. This washing out appears to me to be legitimate and just. When the White steps down from his higher pedestal and mates with the Black who is beneath him, then does the White become responsible for the result of his degeneration. The mulatto is the white man's shame, not the poor black woman's. It is just that the white race should accept the burden.
"Ach! But the remedy for all is time; time and charity, infinite patience, and the iron enforcement of the law of the land.
"Poor Dessalines! Poor, poor Dessalines! Poor negro; poor, pathetic race! Let us pray in our hearts that the God who has so chastened him may visit with wisdom the minds which govern the hands where rests his destiny."
THE END