clad. The old woman was surprised, for there before her stood a
beautiful young woman, with rosy cheeks, blue eyes, auburn locks and
queenly form. The father and mother stood near, with tears rolling
down their cheeks as memory came surging up like successive waves from
out a past hallowed to them, for they could see in that old woman the
health and strength of their child.

The old woman broke the silence, saying: "Is dat my chile? Is dat de
chile I loved and laid wake wif so many nights and cooked so many
sweet things for? Why, bless yo' heart, honey; dese old hands ust to
take yo' and hug yo' to dis bosom, but yo's too nice now for dese old
hands to eber touch agin."

The young girl said: "No, I'm not, Aunt Hannah. You shall take me in
your arms as when I was a little child," and she gave a bound into the
old woman's arms.

That does not mean social equality, but it does mean gratitude neither
condition nor color can ever bound. If the reciprocities of that old
woman and that beautiful girl were such as to weave enrichments into
both hearts, why should not all peoples, and all individuals, see in
all others but a multiplication of the one each of us is, and that
each is enhanced or diminished in value according to the concentrated
worth of the whole? If man would stand in his lot of conformity to
man, as that old colored woman stood in her lot, it would lift this
world to that height from which we could see the one interest, one
reciprocal, interdependent, together-woven, God-allied and God-saved
humanity.

But in this we fail. Several men, one of them an Irishman, were