“To make one of the rulers of a great republic, a great country, what can stimulate a young man or a young woman more than this? And every prize that is open to the cultured and educated now will in that time be open to them; they can aspire to the highest place jest as soon as they become worthy of it. “All the teachers in colored schools testify that the ability of the colored boys and girls is fully equal to the white. In Jonesville,” sez I, “my own native place, a little colored boy led the roll of honor, wuz more perfect in school than the children of ministers or judges, and they white as snow, and he as black as a little ace of spades.” Sez I, “The idees I have promulgated to you would be apt to light up one side of the Race Problem.” “You have got to put the niggers down,” sez Col. Seybert, as onconvinced as ever, so I see. “That is the only way to get along with them.” Sez I, “That time has gone by, Col. Seybert. “The time when it wuz possible to do this has passed; if you want to make a man, black or white, stay in a dark dungeon, you mustn’t break his chains and show him the stairs that climb up to the sunshine and to liberty. “If he has dropped his chains onto the damp, mouldy pavement, if he has stood on the very lowest of them steps and seen way up over his head the warm sun a shinin’ and heard the song of birds and the distant rushin’ of clear waters, you never can put him back down into that dark, damp dungeon agin, and slip his hands into the fetters and keep him there. “No; he has had a glimpse of the wideness and glory of liberty, and you never can smother it agin. “If this Nation had wanted to keep on a Nation of slaveholders and slaves, it ortn’t to have let the light of Christianity and education shine down onto ’em at all; it ortn’t to have broke their chains and called ’em free. “They will never resign that glorious hope, Col. Seybert; they will press forward. “They have crouched down and wore their fetters long enough; they are a goin’ to stand up and be free men and free wimmen. “And for you or for me to try to put our puny strengths in the way of God’s everlastin’ decree and providence would be like puttin’ up our hands and tryin’ to stop a whirlwind. It would whirl us out of the way, but its path would be onward. “The negroes will be a free people, a powerful, God-fearin’, patient, noble one.” Col. Seybert wuzn’t convinced. Fur from it. He made a motion of extreme disgust. But I turned my head a little, and over Col. Seybert’s shoulder, back behind him, I see a face. It wuz a face illumined, riz up, inspired, if ever a face wuz upon earth. A noble purpose shone through it and made it a grand face. It wuz Victor; he had heard every word I had said and believed every word, only he had fitted the words to suit his own meaning.