of ages; it did not come in a day, nor do I expect that it will vanish
in an hour."

"Nor do I; but I do not think the best way for a people to mend their
pastures is to sit down and bewail their fate."

"No; we must be up and going for ourselves. White people will----"

"White people," exclaimed Mr. Thomas somewhat impatiently. "Is there not
a great deal of bosh in the estimate some of us have formed of white
people. We share a common human feeling, from which the same cause
produces the same effect. Why am I today a social Pariah, begging for
work, and refused situation after situation? My father is a wealthy
Southerner; he has several other sons who are inheritors of his name and
heirs of his wealth. They are educated, cultured and occupy high social
positions. Had I not as good a right to be well born as any of them? And
yet, through my father's crime, I was doomed to the status of a slave
with its heritage of ignorance, poverty and social debasement. Talk of
the heathenism of Africa, of hostile tribes warring upon each other and
selling the conquered foes into the hands of white men, but how much
higher in the scale of moral progression was the white man who doomed
his own child, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, to a life of
slavery? The heathen could plead in his defence the fortunes of war, and
the hostility of an opposing tribe, but the white man who enslaved his
child warred upon his hapless offspring and wrote chattel upon his
condition when his hand was too feeble to hurl aside the accursed hand
and recognize no other ownership but God. I once felt bitterly on this
subject, and although it is impossible for my father to make full
reparation for the personal wrong inflicted on me, I owe him no grudge.
Hating is poor employment for any rational being, but I am not prepared