It is with humiliation that I am forced to insist upon the same equality in other public institutions of learning and science,—also in churches, and in the last resting-places of the dead. So far as any of these are public in character and organized by law, they must follow the general requirement. How strange that any institution of learning or science, any church, or any cemetery should set up a discrimination so utterly inconsistent with correct principle! But I do not forget that only recently a colored officer of the National Army was treated with indignity at the communion-table. To insult the dead is easier, although condemned by Christian precept and heathen example. As in birth, so in death are all alike,—beginning with the same nakedness, and ending in the same decay; nor do worms spare the white body more than the black. This equal lot has been the frequent occasion of sentiment and of poetry. Horace has pictured pallid Death with impartial foot knocking at the cottages of the poor and the towers of kings.[198] In the same spirit the early English poet, author of “Piers Ploughman,” shows the lowly and the great in their common house:—
“For in charnel at chirche
Cherles ben yvel to knowe,
Or a knyght from a knave there.”[199]
And Chaucer even denies the distinction in life:—
“But understond in thine entent
That this is not mine entendement,
To clepe no wight in no ages
Onely gentle for his linages:
Though he be not gentle borne,