He looked at his watch, and sez he:
“I have got a pressing engagement in just five minutes by my watch; I will bid you good-day.”
And he hastened off, and Thomas Jefferson laughed, and sez he:
“You talked him out, mother; but,” sez he, “I didn’t know as you believed so strongly in colonization; I never heard you talk just in this way before.”
“Wall,” sez I, “the Race Problem is such a enormous conundrum that it is hard to know jest how to get the right answer to it. But,” sez I, “I wuz a talkin’ jest now from Genieve’s platform, I wuz a viewin’ the subject from her standpoint, and from Victor’s, and also,” sez I, glancin’ to where that dear man lay, lookin’ pleasant as ever, “from Cousin John Richard’ses;” and I added, “considerable from my own.” And sez I, a turnin’ to Genieve where she sot quietly with Boy in her arms, “You don’t feel any oncertainty as to this conundrum, do you? You see your way clear to a right answer?”
“Yes,” sez she. And her eyes wuz as clear as two wells of pure water on which the stars wuz a shinin’.
“Yes, I know what is best and what will take place in God’s own time.”
There it wuz, no more doubt in her mind about the negroes havin’ a country and a nation of their own some time than there wuz to Moses as he stood on the mountain-top and looked over Jordan’s stormy banks into the land that should be the home of his weary and sorrowful people.
Genieve stood upon some invisible mountain-top; we couldn’t see this rise of ground, our eyes wuz too weak, but her feet wuz placed there. And she see over the rollin’ billows of turbulent factions, and swellin’ hatred, and mistaken zeal, and perils from friends, and perils from foes, and perils from high places, and perils from low ones, and the black waters of ignorance, and laziness, and discontent, and old habits and customs a breakin’ up and a dashin’ their spray here and there, and all the horror and woe and danger of an uprisin’ and a exodus—she see over all these swellin’ waves into the fair country that lay beyend.
We couldn’t see the calm sunshine that lit the Promised Land, but we could see a faint glow from its radiance in Genieve’s inspired eyes.