And his lips, that wuz resolute and firm enough sometimes, could anon, or oftener, grow tremulous with feelin’ and eloquence. He wuz a earnest Christian, a professor of religion, and, what is fur better, a practicer of the same. He give his idees to me in full that day in confidence (and a desire to linger till Genieve got back). Some of these idees he got from Genieve, some on ’em he learned from books, and kindred minds, and close observation, and remembrance of talks he had hearn when such things sunk deep in his heart, and some on ’em sprung up from seeds God had planted in his soul, onbeknown to him; in a woman we call it intuition. But anyway, no matter by what name we call these seeds, they lay in the soul till the Sun of Occasion warms ’em into life, and then they open their star flowers and find the way to the Right and the True. To Victor the welfare of his mother’s people lay nearer to his heart than even Genieve, much as he loved her—than his own life, sacred as he held it, holding, as he believed it did, a mission for humanity. It wuz his idee to transplant the Africans to some place where they could live out their full lives without interference or meddlin’ with from another people, that must, in the nature of things, be always an alien race and one opposed to the black race instinctively and beyend remedy. I see jest how it wuz; I see that nobody, no matter how strong you should fix the medicine and how powerful the doses you might give, could cure this distemper, this instinctive, deep-rooted feelin’ of antipathy and repulsion towards the negro. I see that no amount of pills and plasters wuz a goin’ to make the negro feel free and easy with the white race. There is a deep-rooted difference of opinion, and difference of feelin’, difference of aims, and desires, and everything between the two races. It is as deep down as creation, and as endless as eternity, and can’t be doctored, or tackled up in any way and made to jine and become one. It can’t be did, so there is no use in tryin’. And any amount of flowery speeches or proclamations, or enactments, or anything, hain’t a goin’ to amalgamate the two races and make ’em blend into another and be a hull one. No; a law may contain every big law word, and “to wit” and “be it enacted” and every clause that ever wuz claused, and every amendment that wuz ever amended, but it hain’t a goin’ to make any difference with this law that wuz made in a higher court than any they have in Washington, D. C. And a speech may contain the hull floral tribe, all the flowers that wuz ever heard on; it may soar up in eloquence as fur up as anybody can go, and dwindle down into pathos as deep as ever wuz went. But it is a goin’ to blow over the subject jest like any whiff of wind; it hain’t a goin’ to do the job of makin’ the two races come any nigher to each other.