“But,” sez Col. Seybert, “the Bible commands you, if you are smitten on one cheek to turn the other also.”
“Then why don’t you do it?” sez I, all wrought up. “Your race has had centuries of Christianity to civilize and Christianize it, and why don’t you set a example to the ignorant ones? Mark out a sampler that they can foller on and copy. Why don’t your Regulators and your Ku-Kluxers turn their right cheeks? I’d love to have ’em turn ’em to me a spell,” sez I darkly.
Col. Seybert kinder snorted out sunthin’ that I didn’t quite hear. I believe, and always shall, that there wuz a cuss word in it; but I didn’t care, and before I could speak agin, Cousin John Richard’s calm voice riz up a sayin’:
“You say this race is totally ignorant and brutish, and yet you expect high qualities from them—extraordinary virtues. You expect patience more perfect than long years of training has given the white race. You expect endurance, nobility, forbearance, forgiveness of injuries and wrongs—in fact, you expect the goodness of angels and the wisdom of Solomon, and expect an insolvable problem to be solved by those you rank with your cattle.
“It is a strange thing,” sez Cousin John Richard, as he lay back agin on his cushions. But I went up and gin him a spoonful of spignut before I let him speak agin.
Col. Seybert waved off John Richard’s noble rebuke, and went on on his old ground:
“Your teachers and preachers have overrun the South ever since the War, with your carpet-bags full of Bibles and hymn-books, and tracts, and spelling-books. Why don’t you sit down now and wait and see the fruit of your labors ripen about you instead of encouraging them in this preposterous idea of colonization?”
But Cousin John Richard sez gently but strongly:
“Perhaps this is the fruit that the Lord of the harvest is causing to spring up from the seeds planted in the hearts of this people. Perhaps the full ripening of this fruit depends upon the sunshine of another and a calmer sky.”