It wuz a still twilight. The flowers about her window stood sweet and motionless against the glowin’ light. The last golden rays come through the vine-wreathed casement and fell on the letter lyin’ open in her lap, and as she sot there with her beautiful head leanin’ back against the old carved chair-back, the shinin’ rays seemed to move and get mixed with the shadows of the vine leaves. They moved, they shone, they took form, and as she sot there Genieve saw—whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, God knoweth—but she saw her future home in the New Republic. She saw a fair land lyin’ under a clearer, softer sky, but it bent down on strange foliage—giant palm-trees cleaved the blue sky, and birds, like great crimson and golden blossoms, were flyin’ back and forth in and out of the green, shinin’ branches. Crystal rivers wuz flowin’ through that land, whose clear waves wuz dotted with the sails of a busy commerce. She looked on these heavily freighted ships and see that the commanders and officers, as well as crews, wuz her own dark-skinned race. By the side of these blue crystal highways for the Republic’s wealth wuz flourishin’ towns in which stood great manufactories and workshops for all useful and valuable purposes. She looked into these busy places, and she saw at the loom, and the forge, and the work-bench her own people, and also in the countin’ rooms, and offices, and the superintendent’s rooms—all wore the dark livery of the sun. And she saw that none wuz very rich and none wuz poor, for the work wuz co-operative, and all wuz paid livin’ wages, and all owned a share, even if a small one, in these large undertakings; and she saw that none of the toilers looked haggard and overworked, for their hours of labor wuz short enough to give them all a chance for bodily rest and recreation. She looked into the pulpits of the beautiful churches whose spires rose from the glitterin’ foliage, and wuz scattered over this new land. Colored men and colored wimmen stood in the pulpits and sot in the pews. Large, noble universities and a multitude of public schools dotted the land of this New Republic; colored men and colored wimmen wuz presidents, professors, teachers. The old lessons learned by their ancestors with many a heartache in the Old World wuz bearin’ its rich fruit in the new. She saw great museums, lecture rooms, art galleries, all filled with the glowin’ imagery of the race that tried to orniment and wreathe the chains of servitude with some pitiful blossoms of crude beauty; she beheld these gorgeous fancies trained into magnificent results. The walls wuz glowin’ with beauty and bold magnificence that the tamer, colder-blooded races never dreamed of. [Illustration: “IN THE CHAIR OF THE RULER.”]