This speech made a national sensation. It was printed in full in all the
partisan papers where it was hoped capital might be made of it for the
next political campaign, and the National Campaign Committee of which
he was a member ordered a million copies of it printed for distribution
among the negroes.
When Lowell and Harris reached Boston, as they parted at the depot
Harris said, “Will you be at home to-morrow, Mr. Lowell?”
“Yes, why?”
“I would like a talk with you in the morning on a matter of grave
importance. May I call at nine o’clock?”
“Certainly. Come right into the library. You ’ll find me there,
George.”
That night as Lowell walked through his brilliantly lighted home, he
felt a sense of glowing pride and strength. With his hands behind him he
paced back and forth in his great library and out through the spacious
hall with firm tread and flushed face. He felt he could look these great
ancestors in the face to-night as they gazed down on him from their
heavy gold frames. They had called him to high ambitions and a strenuous
life when his indolence had pleaded for ease and the dilettante-ism of
a fruitless dreaming. His father had cultivated his artistic tastes,
dreamed and done nothing. But these grim-visaged, eagle-eyed ancestors
had called him to a life of realities, and he had heard their voices.
Yes, to-night his name was on a million lips. The door of the United
States Senate was opening at his touch and mightier possibilities loomed
in the future.
He felt a sense of gratitude for the heritage of that stately old home
and its inspiring memories. Its roots struck down into the soil of a
thousand years, and spread beneath the ocean to that greater old world
life. He felt his heart beat with pride that he was adding new honours
to that family history, and adding to the soul-treasures his daughter’s
children would inherit.
Seated in the library next morning Harris was nervous and embarrassed.
He made two or three attempts to begin the subject but turned aside with
some unimportant remark.
“Well, George, what is the problem that makes you so grave this
morning?” asked Lowell with kindly patronage.
Harris felt that his hour had come, and he must face it. He leaned
forward in his chair and looked steadily down at the rug, while he
clasped both his hands firmly across his lap and spoke with great
rapidity.
“Mr. Lowell, I wish to say to you that you have taught me the greatest
faith of life, faith in my fellow man without which there can be no
faith in God. What I have suffered as a man as I have come in contact
with the brutality with which my race is almost universally treated, God
only can ever know.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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