The education of a slave into a man, the harmonizing of two races, the common achievement of a great national life,--it is a long work, but it moves on. "Say not, The struggle naught availeth, The labor and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not nor faileth, And as things have been they remain. "For while the tired waves vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main. "And not through eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light, In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But westward, look, the land is bright!" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: In Maryland, an amendment prescribing a series of elaborate and vexing inquiries, investing the registration officers with judicial powers, and avowedly aiming at the elimination of the negro vote, was passed by the Legislature, at the instigation of Senator Gorman and against the opposition of a Democratic governor, and decisively rejected by the popular vote in November, 1905.] CHAPTER XL LOOKING FORWARD It is difficult to write history, but it is impossible to write prophecy. We can no more tell what lies before us than the Fathers of the Republic could foresee the future a century ago. They little guessed that slavery, which seemed hastening to its end, would take new vigor from an increase of its profits,--that, stimulated by the material gain, a propaganda of religious and political defense would spring up,--that a passionate denunciation and a passionate defense would gradually inflame the whole country,--that meanwhile the absorption of the mass of citizens in private pursuits would blind them to the evil and peril, and prevent that disinterested, comprehensive statesmanship which ought to have assumed as a common burden the emancipation of the slaves,--that the situation would be exasperated by hostility of the sections and complicated by clashing theories of the national Union,--that only by the bitter and costly way of war would a settlement be reached,--and that emancipation, being wrought by force and not by persuasion, would leave the master class "convinced against its will," and a deep gulf between the races, whose spanning is still an uncertain matter,--all this was hidden from the eyes of the wisest, a century ago. So is hidden from our eyes the outworking of the century to come.