“I have been amongst this people night and day for years; I have been in the mansions of the rich, the ruins of the beautiful homes ruined by the war, and in the cabins of the poor. I have been in their schools and their churches, and the halls where the law is misadministered—I have been through the Southern land from one end to the other—and I know what I am talking about. “I went there to try to help the freedmen. I knew these people so lately enslaved were poor and ignorant, and I thought I could help them. “But I was almost as ignorant as you are of the real state of affairs in the South. But I have been there and seen for myself, and I tell you, and I tell this nation, that we are on the eve of another war if something is not done to avert it.” My pardner wuz jest a openin’ his mouth in a derisive remark, but I hitched my chair along and trod on his foot, and onbeknown to me it wuz the foot on which he wuz raisin’ a large corn, and his derisive remark wuz changed to a low groan, and Cousin John Richard went on onhendered. “I went South with good motives, God knows. I knew this newly enfranchised race was sorely in want of knowledge, Christian knowledge most of all. “I thought, as so many others do, that Christianity and education would solve this problem. I never stopped to think that the white race, of whose cruelty the negroes complained, had enjoyed the benefits of Christianity for hundreds of years, and those whose minds were enriched by choicest culture had hearts encased in bitterest prejudices, and it was from the efforts of their avarice and selfishness that I was trying to rescue the freedmen. We accomplished much, but I expected, as so many others have, choicer Christian fruits to spring from this barren soil, that has grown in the rich garden cultivated for centuries. “Education has done and will do much—Christianity more; but neither can sound a soundless deep, nor turn black night into day. “But I never thought of this. I worked hard and meant well, Heaven knows. I thought at first I could do marvellous things; later, when many failures had made me more humble, I thought if I could help only one soul my labor would not be in vain. For who knows,” sez John Richard dreamily, “who knows the tremendous train of influences one sets in motion when he is under God enabled to turn one life about from the path of destruction towards the good and the right? “Who knows but he is helping to kindle a light that shall yet lighten the pathway of a Toussaint L’Ouverture or a Fred Douglass on to victory, and a world be helped by the means? “And if only one soul is helped, does not the Lord of the harvest say, ‘He that turns one man from the error of his ways has saved a soul from death’?”