"Oh, may I love like thee,
In all thy footsteps tread;
Thou hatest all iniquity,
But nothing thou hast made.
"Oh, may I learn the art,
With meekness to reprove;
To hate the sin with all my heart,
But still the sinner love."
You must read this hymn to "Isaiah," and tell him about the prayer-meeting. While the "friends of the slave," as you call them, are holding such humiliating meetings as you describe, in behalf of the slaves, and are vexing themselves and chafing under the imagination of their unmitigated sorrows and "oppression," the slaves themselves, all over the South, are holding prayer-meetings, and are blessing God that they are "raised 'way up to heaven's gate in privilege." As I sat in that prayer-meeting I could almost have risen and asked the prayers of the slaves in behalf of many at the North who are making themselves and others nearly insane on their behalf. But I thought of my former ignorance and prejudice, and said, "And such were some of you."
I will tell you some of the little incidents which meet one every day, and which give you impressions respecting the relations between the whites and blacks, full as instructive as those received in any other way.
Crossing a public street, which is steep, in the city of ——, a truckle-cart came by me at great speed, drawn by a white boy, with another white boy pushing, and seated in it, erect and laughing, was a fine-looking black boy of about the same age as his white playmates. Around the corner of another street there came by me, with a skip-and-jump step, two white girls, about thirteen years old, and between them—the arms of the three all intertwined—was another girl of the same age, as black as ebony. On they went jumping, and keeping step, and singing.
I had not been accustomed to such sights in Beacon Street, on my visits to Boston. "Friends of the slave," as we most surely are, and some of us being decorated with that name by way of distinction, significant of our all-absorbing business "to raise the black man at the South to the condition of a human being," when we get them there we are not greeted in the streets with pictures of white and black children on such terms as appeared in these two casual incidents. Nothing at first struck me with greater wonder at the South than to see the most fashionably dressed ladies in the most public streets stop to help a black woman with a burden on her head, if she needed assistance, or to hold a gate open for a man with a wheelbarrow.
One white boy cried to another across a street, "Come along, it's most time to be in school." The other answered, in a petulant tone, "I a'n't going to school." A tall, white-headed negro was passing; his black surtout nearly touched the ground; he had on his arm a very nice market-basket, covered with a snow-white napkin, and in his right hand a long cane. Hearing what the last boy said, he came to a full stand, put down his basket, clasped his long cane with both hands, and brought it down on the brick sidewalk with three quick raps, and then a rap at each of these points of admiration: "What! what! what!" said he, drawing himself up to express surprise, and calling out with magisterial voice; "Go to school! my son! go to school! and larn! a heap!" the cane making emphasis at every expression. The white boy retreated under the impression of a well-deserved, though kind, rebuke. He did not call the old man "nigger," nor in any way insult him.
But here is an incident of a different kind.
Standing to talk with a man who had charge of my baggage, in the passage-way between the baggage-room and the colored passengers' apartment. I saw a white man with a pert, flurried manner and coarse look ascend the steps of the cars, and behind him a tall graceful black man, a little older than the other, with signs of gentleness and dignity in his appearance. As he stooped and turned, his air and carriage would have commanded attention anywhere. The white man, seeing him enter the wrong door, cried out to him with an impudent voice, ordered him back, pointed him to the proper room, and told him to go in there and make himself "oneasy," with a laugh at his own attempt at inaccurate talk as he cast a glance at some white men standing by. The black man was his slave. The natural and proper order of things was reversed in their relation to each other.
I looked at the black man as he took his seat, and, without being observed, I kept my eye on his face. He cast his eye out of the window, as though to relieve a struggle of emotions, but a calm expression settled down upon his features.