“Yes, exactly,” sez he. “The shoe is a good sound one, but the foot is too big; it won’t go into it.”
“But,” sez I, “as Josiah remarked to you, wouldn’t it cost awfully?”
“Will it cost any less ten years from now? The colored population of the South increases at the rate of five hundred every twenty-four hours.
“By the most careful estimates it has been found that in less than twenty years the black race will outnumber the whites to the number of a million. What will be done then? Will the white man leave this country to make room for the negro? It is plain that there will not be room for both.”
And I murmured almost entirely onbeknown to myself, “No, I don’t spoze he would.”
“No, indeed,” sez Cousin John Richard. “The Anglo-Saxon will not leave this country, his inheritance, for the sake of peace or to make room for another race; then what will be done? I hear the voice of the Lord,” sez John Richard solemnly, “I hear His voice saying, ‘Let my people go.’” The silence seemed solemn; it seemed some like the pauses that come in a protracted meetin’ between two powerful speakers. I felt queer.
But I did speak up almost entirely onbeknown to myself, and sez I, “Could they take care of themselves in a colony of their own? Do they know enough?”
Sez John Richard, “A race that has accumulated property to the extent of six millions of dollars in one Southern State since the war, under all the well-nigh unendurable drawbacks and persecutions that have beset it, will be able, I believe, to at least do as much, when these hampering and oppressive influences are withdrawn and the colored man has a clear field, in an atmosphere of strength and courage and encouragement—where in this air of liberty he can enjoy the rewards of his labor and behold the upbuilding of his race.
“And what a band of missionaries and teachers will go out from this new republic, upon every side of them, in darkest Africa, to preach the peaceful doctrine of the cross!
“In these same dark forests, where their ancestors were hewn down and shot down like so many wild beasts, and dragged, maimed and bleeding, to become burden bearers and chained slaves to an alien race—