IX
THE SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW
| Shoemaker: | No, my lord, they don’t hurt you there. |
| Foppington: | I tell thee, they pinch me execrably. |
| Shoemaker: | Well, then, my lord, if those shoes pinch you, I’ll be d——d. |
| Foppington: | Why, wilt thou undertake to persuade me I cannot feel? |
| Shoemaker: | Your lordship may please to feel what you think fit; but that shoe does not hurt you. |
| —(“A Trip to Scarborough.”) |
The Southern point of view can be gathered together in a very short chapter. Its expression has so crystallized that it can be set down in a series of paragraphs and phrases. Whosoever doth not believe, without doubt he shall be damned everlastingly. Wherever you meet a Southerner, be it in the remotest corner of the earth, it is the same as in native Alabama. I was talking to the Mother Superior of a convent one day in a genial English countryside. Although I did not know it, she derived from Mississippi. I mentioned the subject of the Negro, and from her quiet face, meager with fasting and pale with meditation, there flashed nevertheless the Southern flame—like lightning across the room.
You have only to mention the Negro sympathetically in a public meeting and some one of Southern extraction will be found opposing to you a statement of the Southern creed. Thus, after speaking one morning at Carnegie Hall, some one came up to me and said very emphatically: If you had lived among the Negroes you would not speak of them as you do—the inevitable Southerner.
This is his creed:
1. We understand the niggers and they like us. When they go North they’re crazy till they get back to us. The North does not understand the nigger, pets him and spoils him, and at last dislikes him more than any Southerner.
2. We have occasionally race riots in the South, but they are generally caused by Yankees who have come South. In any case the worst riots in recent years have taken place in the North—at Washington, right under the President’s nose, and at Chicago.
3. Few Northerners or Englishmen understand or can understand the Negro problem. Those who understand, agree with us. Those who do not agree, do not understand.
4. The nigger is all right as long as he is kept in his place. You must make him keep his distance. If once you are familiar with him, you are lost. He will give himself such airs that it will be impossible to get on with him.