Antoinette L. Brown (Engraved by J. C. Buttre)
The Size of Souls.
A quaint old writer describes a class of persons who have souls so very small that "500 of them could dance at once upon the point of a cambric needle." These wee people are often wrapped up in a lump of the very coarsest of human clay, ponderous enough to give them the semblance of full-grown men and women. A grain of mustard seed, buried in the heart of a mammoth pumpkin, would be no comparison to the little soul, sheathed in its full grown body. The contrast in size would be insufficient to convey an adequate impression; and the tiny soul has little of the mustard seed spiciness.
Yet if this mass of flesh is only wrapped up in a white skin, even though it is not nearly thick enough to conceal the grossness and coarseness of the veiled material, the poor "feeble folk" within will fancy that he really belongs to the natural variety of aristocratic humanity. He has the good taste to refuse condescension sufficient to allow him to eat at table with a Frederick Douglass, a Samuel R. Ward, or a Dr. Pennington. Poor light little soul! It can borrow a pair of flea's legs, and, hopping up to the magnificent lights of public opinion, sit looking down upon the whole colored race in sovereign contempt.
Take off the thin veneering of a white skin, substitute in its stead the real African ebony, and then place him side by side with one of the above-mentioned men. Measure intellect with intellect—eloquence with eloquence! Mental and moral infancy stand abashed in the presence of nature's noblemen!
So, mere complexion is elevated above character. Sensible men and women are not ashamed of the acknowledgment. The fact has a popular endorsement. People sneer at you if you are not ready to comprehend the fitness of the thing. If you cannot weigh mind in a balance with a moiety of coloring matter, and still let the mind be found wanting, expect, in America, to lose cast yourself for want of approved taste.
If sin is capable of being made to look mean, narrow, contemptible—to exhibit itself in its character of thorough, unmitigated bitterness—it is when exhibited in the light of our "peculiar" prejudices. Mind, Godlike, immortal mind, with its burden of deathless thought, its comprehensive and discriminating reason, its brilliant wit, its genial humor, its store-house of thrilling memories—a voice of mingled power and pathos, words burning with the unconsuming fire of genius, virtues gathering in ripened beauty upon a brave heart, and moral integrity preeminent over all else—all this could not make a black man the social equal of a white coxcomb, even though his brain were as blank as white paper, and his heart as black as darkness concentrated. May heaven alleviate our undiluted stupidity!
Antoinette L. Brown.