“I’ve learned that the only way to stop that sort of thing is by way of schools. You know how my own father died, and he was a preacher. I’m a-going to be a preacher myself some time—I’ve preached once or twice—they made me, up North there. But I don’t want to preach now. I just want to talk to my neighbors.
“Now, I didn’t run away. You know I won’t flicker. If it’s war, I’m here for war—but I don’t want it to be war.
“Outside, in the Old World, where our great-grandpaps came from once, maybe, they’re having war. It’s worse than any of you dream. But they’re all fighting for a principle, as they think. We’re fighting for nothing down here.
“Now, I want to see peace in the Cumberlands. I’m telling you, I want to start a college right here, on the hill yonder. I’m going to do that some time. Don’t you believe me?”
He was looking straight at old Absalom Gannt, and the old man, his eyes fixed steadily upon the speaker, answered him now.
“What law have we got to believe ye? Ye’ve got no money to start a school. Ye couldn’t keep a teacher thar if ye did.” Thus old Absalom.
“That’s true,” replied David Joslin quietly. “That’s the Gospel truth! As I stand here now I haven’t got two dollars in my pockets. It’s plumb taken all the money I’ve got to keep the soul alive in my body so I could study hard as I had to. But when I do get through up there, I promise you I’ll come here and start a college. Money or no money—help or no help—I’ll come and start that college! If I do, will you promise me that between now and that time you’ll not start any trouble here?”
The grizzled old man—leader of his people, therefore leader by strength of mind as well as body—sat silent now, looking him straight in the face, and Joslin returned his gaze with equal fearlessness.
“You know I never flickered, Absalom Gannt! You know my people won’t run away, not one of them. You know I won’t run away. You all know why I left; and now you know why I’ve come back.
“I’ve come here to do a mighty work, you’ll have to admit that fair. It’s a terrible task for all of us. We’ve got to change the ways we’ve been living here for more than a hundred years. We’ve got to break a hole in this wall that shuts us out of the world where we belong, that makes us children and paupers where we ought to be men and citizens. We’ve got to make our own way out.