the next day the preacher had a call from miss susan walker of boston, whose liberality had built the new negro school house and whose life and fortune was devoted to the education and elevation of the negro race. she had been in the village often within the year, running up from independence where she was building and endowing a magnificent classical college for negroes. he had often heard of her, but as she stopped with negroes when on her visits he had never met her. he was especially interested in her after hearing incidentally that she was a member of a baptist church in boston.
on entering the parlour the preacher greeted his visitor with the deference the typical southern man instinctively pays to woman.
“i am pleased to meet you, madam,” he said with a graceful bow and kindly smile, as he led her to the most comfortable seat he could find.
she looked him squarely in the face for a moment as though surprised and smilingly replied, “i believe you southern men are all alike, woman flatterers. you have a way of making every woman believe you think her a queen. it pleases me, i can’t help confessing it, though i sometimes despise myself for it. but i am not going to give you an opportunity to feed my vanity this morning. i’ve come for a plain face to face talk with you on the one subject that fills my heart, my work among the freedmen. you are a baptist minister. i have a right to your friendship and co-operation.”
a cloud overshadowed the preacher’s face as he seated himself. he said nothing for a moment, looking curiously and thoughtfully at his visitor.
he seemed to be studying her character and to be puzzled by the problem. she was a woman of prepossessing appearance, well past thirty-five, with streaks of grey appearing in her smoothly brushed black hair. she was dressed plainly in rich brown material cut in tailor fashion, and her heavy hair was drawn straight up pompadour style from her forehead with apparent carelessness and yet in a way that heightened the impression of strength and beauty in her face. her nose was the one feature that gave warning of trouble in an encounter. she was plump in figure, almost stout, and her nose seemed too small for the breadth of her face. it was broad enough, but too short, and was pug tipped slightly at the end. she fell just a little short of being handsome and this nose was responsible for the failure. it gave to her face when agitated, in spite of evident culture and refinement, the expression of a feminine bull dog.
her eyes were flashing now, and her nostrils opened a little wider and began to push the tip of her nose upward. at last she snapped out suddenly, “well, which is it, friend or foe? what do you honestly think of my work?”
“pardon me, miss walker, i am not accustomed to speak rudely to a lady. if i am honest, i don’t know where to begin.”
“bah! lay aside your don quixote southern chivalry this morning and talk to me in plain english. it doesn’t matter whether i am a woman or a man. i am an idea, a divine mission this morning. i mean to establish a high school in this village for the negroes, and to build a baptist church for them. i learn from them that they have great faith in you. many of them desire your approval and co-operation. will you help me?”
“to be perfectly frank, i will not. you ask me for plain english. i will give it to you. your presence in this village as a missionary to the heathen is an insult to our intelligence and christian manhood. you come at this late day a missionary among the heathen, the heathen whose heart and brain created this republic with civil and religious liberty for its foundations, a missionary among the heathen who gave the world washington, whose giant personality three times saved the cause of american liberty from ruin when his army had melted away. you are a missionary among the children of washington, jefferson, monroe, madison, jackson, clay and calhoun! madam, i have baptised into the fellowship of the church of christ in this county more negroes than you ever saw in all your life before you left boston.
“at the close of the war there were thousands of negro members of white baptist churches in the state. your mission is not to proclaim the gospel of jesus christ. your mission is to teach crack-brained theories of social and political equality to four millions of ignorant negroes, some of whom are but fifty years removed from the savagery of african jungles. your work is to separate and alienate the negroes from their former masters who can be their only real friends and guardians. your work is to sow the dragon’s teeth of an impossible social order that will bring forth its harvest of blood for our children.”
he paused a moment, and, suddenly facing her continued, “i should like to help the cause you have at heart: and the most effective service i could render it now would be to box you up in a glass cage, such as are used for rattlesnakes, and ship you back to boston.”
“indeed! i suppose then it is still a crime in the south to teach the negro?” she asked this in little gasps of fury, her eyes flashing defiance and her two rows of white teeth uncovering by the rising of her pugnacious nose.
“for you, yes. it is always a crime to teach a lie.”
“thank you. your frankness is all one could wish!”
“pardon my apparent rudeness. you not only invited, you demanded it. while about it, let me make a clean breast of it. i do you personally the honour to acknowledge that you are honest and in dead earnest, and that you mean well. you are simply a fanatic.”
“allow me again to thank you for your candour!”
“don’t mention it, madam. you will be canonised in due time. in the meantime let us understand one another. our lives are now very far apart, though we read the same bible, worship the same god and hold the same great faith. in the settlement of this negro question you are an insolent interloper. you’re worse, you are a wilful spoiled child of rich and powerful parents playing with matches in a powder mill. i not only will not help you, i would, if i had the power seize you, and remove you to a place of safety. but i cannot oppose you. you are protected in your play by a million bayonets and back of these bayonets are banked the fires of passion in the north ready to burst into flame in a moment. the only thing i can do is to ignore your existence. you understand my position.”
“certainly, doctor,” she replied good naturedly.
she had recovered from the rush of her anger now and was herself again. a curious smile played round her lips as she quietly added:
“i must really thank you for your candour. you have helped me immensely. i understand the situation now perfectly. i shall go forward cheerfully in my work and never bother my brain again about you, or your people, or your point of view. you have aroused all the fighting blood in me. i feel toned up and ready for a life struggle. i assure you i shall cherish no ill feeling toward you. i am only sorry to see a man of your powers so blinded by prejudice. i will simply ignore you.”
“then, madam, it is quite clear we agree upon establishing and maintaining a great mutual ignorance. let us hope, paradoxical as it may seem, that it may be for the enlightenment of future generations!”
she arose to go, smiling at his last speech.
“before we part, perhaps never to meet again, let me ask you one question,” said the preacher still looking thoughtfully at her.
“certainly, as many as you like.”
“why is it that you good people of the north are spending your millions here now to help only the negroes, who feel least of all the sufferings of this war? the poor white people of the south are your own flesh and blood. these scotch covenanters are of the same puritan stock, these german, huguenot and english people are all your kinsmen, who stood at the stake with your fathers in the old world. they are, many of them, homeless, without clothes, sick and hungry and broken hearted. but one in ten of them ever owned a slave. they had to fight this war because your armies invaded their soil. but for their sorrows, sufferings and burdens you have no ear to hear and no heart to pity. this is a strange thing to me.”
“the white people of the south can take care of themselves. if they suffer, it is god’s just punishment for their sins in owning slaves and fighting against the flag. do i make myself clear?” she snapped.
“perfectly, i haven’t another word to say.”
“my heart yearns for the poor dear black people who have suffered so many years in slavery and have been denied the rights of human beings. i am not only going to establish schools and colleges for them here, but i am conducting an experiment of thrilling interest to me which will prove that their intellectual, moral, and social capacity is equal to any white man’s.”
“is it so?” asked the preacher.
“yes, i am collecting from every section of the south the most promising specimens of negro boys and sending them to our great northern universities where they will be educated among men who treat them as equals, and i expect from the boys reared in this atmosphere, men of transcendent genius, whose brilliant achievements in science, art and letters will forever silence the tongues of slander against their race. the most interesting of these students i have at harvard now is young george harris. his mother is eliza harris, the history of whose escape over the ice of the ohio river fleeing from slavery thrilled the world. this boy is a genius, and if he lives he will shake this nation.”
“it may be, miss walker. there are more ways than one to shake a nation. and while i ignore your work, as a citizen and public man,—privately and personally, i shall watch this experiment with profound interest.”
“i know it will succeed. i believe god made us of one blood,” she said with enthusiasm.
“is it true. madam, that you once endowed a home for homeless cats before you became interested in the black people?” with a twinkle in his eye the preacher softly asked this apparently irrelevant question.
“yes, sir, i did,—i am proud of it. i love cats. there are over a thousand in the home now, and they are well cared for. whose business is it?”
“i meant no offense by the question. i love cats too. but i wondered if you were collecting negroes only now, or, whether you were adding other specimens to your menagerie for experimental purposes.”
she bit her lips, and in spite of her efforts to restrain her anger, tears sprang to her eyes as she turned toward the preacher whose face now looked calmly down upon her with ill-concealed pride.
“oh! the insolence of you southern people toward those who dare to differ with you about the negro!” she cried with rage.
“i confess it humbly as a christian, it is true. my scorn for these maudlin ideas is so deep that words have no power to convey it. but come,” said the preacher in the kindliest tone. “enough of this. i am pained to see tears in your eyes. pardon my thoughtlessness. let us forget now for a little while that you are an idea, and remember only that you are a charming boston woman of the household of our own faith. let me call mrs. durham, and have you know her and discuss with her the thousand and one things dear to all women’s hearts.”
“no, i thank you! i feel a little sore and bruised, and social amenities can have no meaning for those whose souls are on fire with such antagonistic ideas as yours and mine. if mrs. durham can give me any sympathy in my work i’ll be delighted to see her, otherwise i must go.”
the preacher laughed aloud.
“then let me beg of you, never meet mrs. durham. if you do, the war will break out again. i don’t wish to figure in a case of assault and battery. mrs. durham was the owner of fifty slaves. she represents the bluest of the blue blood of the slave-holding aristocracy of the south. she has never surrendered and she never will. wars, surrenders, constitutional amendments and such little things make no impression on her mind whatever. if you think i am difficult, you had better not puzzle your brain over her. i am a mildly constructive man of progress. she is a conservative.”
“then we will say good-bye,” said miss walker, extending her small plump hand in friendly parting. “i accept your challenge which this interview implies. i will succeed if god lives,” and she set her lips with a snap that spoke volumes.
“and i will watch you from afar with sorrow and fear and trembling,” responded the preacher.
