But there is one thing she can do—she is used to it—she can suffer. Genieve could throw herself down upon the silent, cold body of her lover, while like a confused dream the whole past rushed through her mind. Her glowing hopes cut short, her life’s happiness all slain by the enemies of truth. She could lie there and try to think of the years between her and death. How could she live them? As she lies there prone in her helpless and hopeless wretchedness, she is not a bad symbol of her race. Heart-broken, agonized through the ages, helpless to avenge her wrongs, too hopeless and heart-broken to attempt it if she could. Her life ruin brought about by the foolishness of preachin’ what is wrong. The happiness or the wretchedness of one colored woman is of too little account to make it a factor in the settlement of grave political affairs. The tragedy in the magnolia shadows is nothin’ unusual; such things must occur in such environment—statesmen expect it. And after all, they may reason, it is only the takin’ off of one of the surplus inhabitants. Indeed, some contend that the speedy extinction of all newly made citizens, colored, and troublesome, either South or West, is the surest and safest solution of the vexed problem. And this is only one the less of an inferior race. And yet as he lays there, his wide-open eyes look up into the bending heaven as if demanding justice and pity from Him who left thrones and divine glory to dwell with the poor and despised, who wept with them over their dead, and who is now gone into the heavens to plead their cause aginst their oppressors. As he lays there his face is wet with tears of a very human anguish. Somehow this easy answer is not workin’ well in this case. And up in the mansion house grief wails for the eternal losses caused by this same blunder. There are the innocent sufferin’ for the guilty. The old puzzle unfoldin’ itself anew—of the close links bindin’ human brotherhood. And how the rough breakin’ of one link is hazardous to all the golden rings of the chain that binds humanity together. Poor Josiah Allen! the doctrine he preached so long—that if you let an evil alone it will do you no harm—wuz all broke down and crushed to pieces. Poor old man! mournin’ over the sweet bud that too ontimely perished in its first bloom. Poor man! poor, broken-hearted old Grandpa—with the silver voice that used to make a music of that name stilled forever. How can any pen, no matter how touched with flame from the altar, how can it picture that night? Maggie layin’ like death, passin’ from one faintin’ fit into another. Thomas Jefferson, poor, poor boy, lookin’ up into my face with dumb pleadin’ for the comfort he could not find there. No, I couldn’t comfort him at that time, for what wuz I a thinkin’ of, in the impatience of my agony, the onreasonableness of my bewildered, rebellious pain?