And up in the mansion house grief wails for the eternal losses caused by this same blunder.
There are the innocent sufferin’ for the guilty. The old puzzle unfoldin’ itself anew—of the close links bindin’ human brotherhood. And how the rough breakin’ of one link is hazardous to all the golden rings of the chain that binds humanity together.
Poor Josiah Allen! the doctrine he preached so long—that if you let an evil alone it will do you no harm—wuz all broke down and crushed to pieces. Poor old man! mournin’ over the sweet bud that too ontimely perished in its first bloom.
Poor man! poor, broken-hearted old Grandpa—with the silver voice that used to make a music of that name stilled forever.
How can any pen, no matter how touched with flame from the altar, how can it picture that night? Maggie layin’ like death, passin’ from one faintin’ fit into another.
Thomas Jefferson, poor, poor boy, lookin’ up into my face with dumb pleadin’ for the comfort he could not find there.
No, I couldn’t comfort him at that time, for what wuz I a thinkin’ of, in the impatience of my agony, the onreasonableness of my bewildered, rebellious pain?
I said in them first hours, and I turned my face away from the light as I said it, “Darkness and despair is over the hull world. Snow is dead!”
And I thought to myself bitterly, what if the South duz rise up out of its dark dreams into a glorious awakenin’, a peaceful, prosperous future—what of it? Our darlin’, the light of our eyes, has gone forever. What can any sunshine do, no matter how bright, only to pour down vainly upon the sweet blue eyes that will never open again? And fur in the East a grand republic may rise holdin’ in its newer life the completed knowledge of the older civilizations. But Snow is dead!
Yes, I sez to myself, as did another, “If they want a new song for their Africa free, let none look to me,” I sez, “my old heart cannot raise to anthems of joy and glory.”