Samantha at the St. Louis ExpositionHolley, Marietta
General
Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition
Holley, Marietta
Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 : Saint Louis, Mo.) -- Fiction
He'll have as hard work to do it as that widower I hearn on who had
three or four children of his own, and married a widow who also had a
number, and then they had several, and one day she came callin' to her
husband, "Come quick! come quick! Your children and my children are
fightin' with our children."
But Uncle Sam will be on hand, he'll wade right in with a birch gad or a
spellin' book, jest which he thinks they need most at the time, and
settle the differences all right, and I believe it will be a star in his
crown in time to come: turning the savages and cannibals that inhabit
part of these new possessions into good American citizens.
I don't spoze I shall see the day when this shall fully come to pass,
and mebby the babies of to-day will be great-grandpas before it takes
place, but it will be, I believe, and so duz Josiah.
Yes, he's doin' a good job by his step-children, I guess they would be
called that seein' he stepped in when they wuz poor and oppressed and
took 'em under his care.
I honor him for it, but wish he would do as well by his steal children,
the dark complexioned ones stole away from their own land to be slaves
and drudges for his white children.
He'll mebby tell me they wuz ignorant and degraded and wuz better off
here than in their own land, but I'll say back to him, "Samuel, Josiah
and I would probable be in a better house and more high-toned society if
some king or other should steal us and carry us away from our humble
farm to their palace. But do you spoze we would enjoy ourselves as well?
No indeed!"
And 'tennyrate they're here, the problem that lays so heavy on the
Southern and Northern heart and conscience and the riddle gits harder
and harder to solve. The lurid blaze of livin' torches makes bloody
blindness in the eyes of them that look on and light them fires. The
disgraceful glare flames out, shamin' you in the eyes of the world, and
streams up to the pityin' heavens askin' for justice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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