In all social relations we should have the utmost liberty--but public duties should be discharged and public rights should be recognized, without the slightest discrimination on account of race or color. Riding in the same cars, stopping at the same inns, sitting in the same theatres, no more involve a social question, or social equality, than speaking the same language, reading the same books, hearing the same music, traveling on the same highway, eating the same food, breathing the same air, warming by the same sun, shivering in the same cold, defending the same flag, loving the same country, or living in the same world. And yet, thousands of people are in deadly fear about social equality. They imagine that riding with colored people is dangerous--that the chance acquaintance may lead to marriage. They wish to be protected from such consequences by law. They dare not trust themselves. They appeal to the Supreme Court for assistance, and wish to be barricaded by a constitutional amendment. They are willing that colored women shall prepare their food--that colored waiters shall bring it to them--willing to ride in the same cars with the porters and to be shown to their seats in theatres by colored ushers--willing to be nursed in sickness by colored servants. They see nothing dangerous--nothing repugnant, in any of these relations,--but the idea of riding in the same car, stopping at the same hotel, fills them with fear--fear for the future of our race. Such people can be described only in the language of Walt Whitman. "They are the immutable, granitic pudding-heads of the world.". Liberty is not a social question. Civil equality is not social equality. We are equal only in rights. No two persons are of equal weight, or height. There are no two leaves in all the forests of the earth alike--no two blades of grass--no two grains of sand--no two hairs. No two any-things in the physical world are precisely alike. Neither mental nor physical equality can be created by law, but law recognizes the fact that all men have been clothed with equal rights by Nature, the mother of us all. The man who hates the black man because he is black, has the same spirit as he who hates the poor man because he is poor. It is the spirit of caste. The proud useless despises the honest useful. The parasite idleness scorns the great oak of labor on which it feeds, and that lifts it to the light. I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart--the best brain. Superiority is born of honesty, of virtue, of charity, and above all, of the love of liberty. The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenceless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.