The Secret Life: Being the Book of a HereticBisland, Elizabeth
Philosophy
The Secret Life: Being the Book of a Heretic
Bisland, Elizabeth
Diaries
It is in this relation that the Sentimentalists find Booker Washington
so greatly to their taste. Washington, innocent of their purposes,
of course is an admirable and sensible man, who has established an
excellent school for the young people of his race. A school far
wiser and more merciful in conception than any attempt made by the
negrophiles to benefit their protégés, and all honour is due this
enlightened ex-slave for his own astonishing progress and his generous
sharing of his fruitful labours with his own people. The Sentimentalist
professes to find in it "something godlike," a "touch of the divine,"
as one of them recently characterized what is, reduced to simple facts,
the establishing of an industrial school for negroes by a negro.
December 1.
The Real Thing.
The man who has educated the negro, the man who has had in him really a
touch of the divine, would never appeal to the Sentimentalist.
Booker Washington, very properly, of course, lives and lives well upon
the results of his school. He has claimed from the rich, and justly has
received, lavish aid for his enterprise. He dresses well, lives amply,
travels in comfort, is entertained by Royalty and Chief Magistrates,
and with his family, is put beyond even a chance of narrow means by his
sympathizers' lavishness. But who heeds the man who has really educated
the negro? What crowned head or President entertains the small farmer
in rough brogans and faded jeans, who sweats over his hoe in the cotton
and tobacco fields, or in the steaming rice and sugar-cane swamps, and
who has in forty years spent more than a hundred millions upon the
education of the negro? This is the man, and the son of the man who
turned heart-brokenly home on the begrudged horse to fields overgrown
and laid waste--fields to which his conquerors, unlike the English,
contributed no seeds or implements or stock--and from that land he has
wrung by the hard labour of his hands that hundred millions which has
been spent in educating his ex-slave.
He has lived hardly, in dingy, decaying houses, he has eaten of the
coarsest, he has known no beauty or grace, and but scant comfort, he
has been clothed in the plainest, he has politically known little but
injury and contempt from the larger and wealthier half of his country,
and worst of all he has seen his sons grow to manhood but partially
and inadequately equipped with learning, because so large a portion of
their birthright must be shared in the teaching of the negro in whose
name he had been plundered and slaughtered.
The touching point of the story is that it has all been done without
any consciousness of special merit. The duty was to be done, and was
done without trumpets or drums. Such silent, patient, unreflecting,
unadvertised goodness would, of course, never appeal to the
Sentimentalist. If he could be brought to see it 'twould merely disturb
his self-satisfaction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account