Rosy used often to come to Maggie’s kitchen to ask for things they wanted. For one peculiarity of this family wuz that they seemed only serenely performin’ their duty when they begged for anything they wanted. One day, as she sot before me arrayed in cheap, dirty finery, I said to her: “Rosy, can you read or write?” “No, missy.” “Wouldn’t you like to learn to?” “I d’no, missy.” “There is a colored school only a little ways from here, where a good many of your people are learnin’ to be good scholars. Why don’t you go to it?” “I d’no, missy.” “If you will go I will give you the books you will want. Will you go if I will get them for you?” “Yes, missy.” A most unblushin’ falsehood, as I learned afterwards. For she sold the books as soon as I gave them to her at the little store at the Corners, sold them for a string of yellow glass beads and a cheap cotton lace collar. And when I taxed her with this, she denied it at once. And when I told her that I saw the books at the store myself, she said she had lost the books on her way to school, and the beads and collar had been given her. “’Fore de Lawd dey had.” What could any one do with such ignorance, and falsehood, and utter lack of principle? And as Maggie said, “The South is overrun with just such characters as these.” Not all of them about there wuz so, she said, not by any means; some of them wuz earnest Christians, good scholars, good inhabitants. But thousands and thousands of those who wuz slaves, bred to concealment and lies in self-defence, taught all kinds of vice by the system under which they wuz born and nurtured, seem to have no sense of what is right and what is wrong; they will steal with no compunction of conscience; lie when the truth would serve them better; will only work when compelled to, and are low and depraved every way. “What is to be done with them?” sez I. And Maggie said and I thought there wuz but one answer to this, wherever they be, for movin’ their bodies round won’t purify their souls to once nor quicken their intellects imegiatly. Give them the Bible, teach them, arouse them from the dark sleep of sin and ignorance, learn them to stand upright and then to walk. Givin’ such men the right to vote and control by their greater numbers the educated race is as simple as it would be to set a baby that had never took a step to runnin’ a race for a prize with an athlete. The baby has got to stand on its feet first, get a little strength in its soft, unused muscles, then it has got to learn to walk, then to run, and so on; after long patience and teachin’, it can mebby win its race by runnin’ and leapin’; but not at first, not before it can creep.