Ignorance on both sides, inherited prejudices, and personal spite, and animosities blossomin’ out in its fruit of horror.
“They were burnt at the stake; they were sawed asunder; they were destitute, afflicted, tormented.”
Your soul burns within you as you read of these deeds that took place in Jerusalem; your heart aches for them who wandered about tormented, hunted down on every side; you lavish your sympathy upon them; but then you think it wuz a savage age, this wuz one of its brutalities, and you congratulate yourself upon livin’ in an age of Christian enlightenment.
DEFENDING HIS HOME.
You think such deeds are impossible in a land over which the Star of Bethlehem has shone for eighteen hundred years.
Down in many a Southern bayou, in the depths of many a cypress swamp, near the remains of a violated home, lies a heap of ashes—all that remains of a man who died fightin’ for his home and his loved ones.
That wuz his only crime—he expiated it with his life. But his liberated soul soared upwards jest as joyfully, let us hope, as if his body received the full sacrament of sorrowful respect.