“And whether this premature responsibility they had caused them to assume was not as cruel as to put knives and rifles into the hands of babies, and send them out to fight a battle with giants—fight or die. [Illustration: “I SOT DEMUTE.”] “And so these wise men, having done their best, it would seem, to rouse the blind passions and intensify the ignorant prejudice and class hatred of the blacks, sit at their ease. “And so the farce has been played out before a pitying heaven, and has been for a quarter of a century, growing more pitiful to look at year by year. “The farce of slave and tyrant masquerading in the robes of liberty and equality, and the poor Northern zealot playing well his part with a fool’s cap and bells. The weak crushed and trodden under foot, the strong shot down by secret violence—murder, rapine, and misrule taking the part of law, and both races swept along to their ruin like a vision of the night.” Why, John Richard’s talk wuz such, he looked on things so different from what I ever had, he put such new and strange idees into my head that I can truly say that he skairt me most to death. I sot demute; I didn’t even think to look to see how my pardner wuz affected by the startlin’ views he wuz promulgatin’. I dropped stitches, I seamed where I hadn’t ought to seam; I wuz extremely nerved up and agitated, and he went on a talkin’ more stranger and startlinger than ever, if possible. “And still these wise men sit and hardly lift their wise eyes. _But when the storm bursts_,” sez Cousin John Richard, in a louder voice than he had used, and more threatenin’ like and prophetic—“when the storm bursts, methinks these wise men will look up, will get up if there is enough left of them to stand after the shock and the violence of the tempest has torn and dashed over them. For the clouds _will_ fill with vengeance, the storm _will_ burst if something is not done soon to avert the fury of its course. “Now, this nation can solve this great question peacefully if it will.” And I sez in agitated axents: “How?” I wuz fearful wrought up. I never had mistrusted there wuz such a state of things anywhere; it come all onbeknown onto me, and sort o’ paralyzed my faculties. I had forgot by this time, if you’ll believe it, whether I wuz a knittin’ or a tattin’. Why, I shouldn’t have been surprised if somebody had spoke up and said I wuz a shearin’ a sheep or pickin’ a goose. I shouldn’t have sensed it, as I know of, I wuz so dumbfoundered and lost and by the side of myself. Sez I, “How?” And sez he, “Let the colored race go into a home and a country of their own. Let them leave the people and the influences that paralyze and hinder their best efforts. Let them leave a race that they burden and hamper and oppress, for injustice reacts worse upon the victor than upon the victim. The two races cannot live together harmoniously; they have tried the experiment for hundreds of years, and failed.” I murmured almost mechanically: