“I went South with good motives, God knows. I knew this newly enfranchised race was sorely in want of knowledge, Christian knowledge most of all. “I thought, as so many others do, that Christianity and education would solve this problem. I never stopped to think that the white race, of whose cruelty the negroes complained, had enjoyed the benefits of Christianity for hundreds of years, and those whose minds were enriched by choicest culture had hearts encased in bitterest prejudices, and it was from the efforts of their avarice and selfishness that I was trying to rescue the freedmen. We accomplished much, but I expected, as so many others have, choicer Christian fruits to spring from this barren soil, that has grown in the rich garden cultivated for centuries. “Education has done and will do much—Christianity more; but neither can sound a soundless deep, nor turn black night into day. “But I never thought of this. I worked hard and meant well, Heaven knows. I thought at first I could do marvellous things; later, when many failures had made me more humble, I thought if I could help only one soul my labor would not be in vain. For who knows,” sez John Richard dreamily, “who knows the tremendous train of influences one sets in motion when he is under God enabled to turn one life about from the path of destruction towards the good and the right? “Who knows but he is helping to kindle a light that shall yet lighten the pathway of a Toussaint L’Ouverture or a Fred Douglass on to victory, and a world be helped by the means? “And if only one soul is helped, does not the Lord of the harvest say, ‘He that turns one man from the error of his ways has saved a soul from death’?” Cousin John Richard’s eye looked now as if he wuz a gazin’ deep into the past—the past of eager and earnest endeavor, and way beyend it into the past that held a happy home, and the light from that forsaken fireside seemed to be a shinin’ up into his face, divinely sad, bitter-sweet, as he went on: “I loved my wife and children as well as another man, but I left them and my happy, happy home to go where duty called. “My wife could not endure that hot climate, and she lay dying when I was so far South that I could not get to her till she had got so far down in the Valley that she could not hear my voice when I spoke to her.” Ah! the waves of memory wuz a dashin’ hard aginst Cousin John Richard then, as we could see. It splashed some of the spray up into his bright eyes. But he kept on: “I was rich enough then to put my children to school, which I did, and then returned to my labors. “I loved my work—I felt for it that enthusiasm and devotion that nerves the heart to endure any trials—and I don’t speak of the persecutions I underwent in that work as being harder than what many others endured.