There was applause, slight at first, but increasing. There were, too, under Mrs. Parson's eye many softening faces, and into them she continued to throw her heart-felt appeal.
“You've been told this morning that Carson Dwight makes fun of us country people. I'll admit I saw him do it once, but it was only once. He made fun of a mountain chap over at Darley one circus day. The fellow had insulted a nice country gal, and Carson Dwight made a lot of fun of him. He hammered the dirty scamp's face till it looked like a ripe tomato that the rats had been gnawin'.”
At this point there was laughter loud and prolonged.
“Now, listen,” the speaker went on. “I want you to hear something, and I don't want you ever to forget it. I got it straight from a truthful man who was there. The night you mountain men gathered from all sides like the rising of the dead on Judgment Day, and got ready to march to Darley to take that boy out of jail, the news reached Carson Dwight just an hour or so before the appointed time. He got a few friends together and told them if they cared for him to make one more effort to stop the trouble.
“Gentlemen, to some extent they was like you. They wasn't—I'm told—much interested in the fate of that nigger, one way or another, and so they sat thar in judgment over Carson Dwight, and tried to argue 'im down. I'm told by a respectable man who was thar” (and here Pole Baker lowered his head till his eyes were out of sight and continued to whittle his stick) “that nothin' feazed 'im. Pity was in his big, boyish heart, and it looked out of his eyes and clogged up his voice. They told him it meant ruination to all his political hopes, and that it would turn his daddy against him for good and all. But he said he didn't care. They held out agin him a long time, and then one thing he said won 'em over—one thing. Kin you imagine what that was, friends and neighbors? It was this: Carson Dwight said he loved you mountain men with all his heart; he said no better or braver blood ever flowed in human veins than yours; he said he knew you thought you was right, but that you hadn't had the chance to discover what he had found out, and that was that Pete Warren was innocent and as harmless as a baby, and that—now, listen!—that he knew the time would come when you'd be convinced of the truth and carry regret for your haste to your graves. 'It is because,' he told them, 'I want to save men that I love from remorse and sorrow that I am in for this thing!' Fellow-citizens, that shot went home. Those worthless 'town dudes,' as they was called just now, saved you from committing a crime against yourselves an' God on high. Did any human bein' ever see a better illustration than that of the duty of enlightened folks to-day—the duty of them who, with divine sight, see great truths—to lead others in the right direction? As God Almighty smiles over you to-day in this broad sunlight, that gang in that store, headed by a new Joseph, was an' are the truest and best friends you ever had.”
There was no open applause, but Mrs. Parsons saw something in the melting faces before her that was infinitely more encouraging, and after a moment's pause, and leaning slightly on the table, she went on: “Before I set down, I want to say one word about this big race question, anyway. I'm just a plain woman, but I read papers an' I've thought about it a lot. We hear some white folks say that the education the niggers are now gettin' is the prime cause of so much crime amongst the blacks—they say this in spite of the fact that it is always the uneducated niggers that commit the rascality. No, my friends, it ain't education that's the cause, it is the lack of it. Education ain't just what is learnt in school-books. It is anything that makes folks higher an' better. Before the war niggers was better educated, for they had the education that come from bein' close to the white race an' profitin' by the'r example. After slavery was abolished the poor, simple numskulls, great, overgrown, fun-lovin' children, was turned loose without advice or guidin' hand, an' the worst part of 'em went downhill. Slavery was education, and I'll bet the Lord had a hand in it, for it has lifted a race from the jungles of Africa to a civilized land full of free schools. So I say, teach 'em the difference between right an' wrong, an' then let 'em work out their own salvation.
“Who in the name of common-sense is to do this if it ain't you of the superior race? But! wait a minute, think! How can you possibly teach 'em what law an' order is without knowin' a little about it yourselves? How can you learn a nigger what justice means when he sees his brother, son, or father, shot dead in his tracks or hung, like a scare-crow to the limb of a tree because some lower grade black man a hundred miles off has committed a dastardly deed? No sensible white man ever thought of puttin' the two races on equality. The duty of the white blood is always to keep ahead of the black, and it will. This candidate openly declares that the time is coming when the negroes will overpower the whites. A man that has as poor an opinion of his own race as that ought to be kicked out of it. Now I can't vote, but I want every woman in this crowd that believes I know what I'm talkin' about to see that her brother, father, or husband votes for a member of the legislature that knows what law an' order means, an' not for a red-handed anarchist who would lay this country in ruins to gain his own puny aims. That's all I've got to say.”
When she had finished there was still no applause. They had learned that it was unseemly to make a demonstration at church, when deeply moved by a sermon, and they had heard something to-day that had lifted them as high under her sway as they had sunken low under Wiggin's. The formal part of the exercises was over, and they proceeded to spread out the contents of their baskets. Wiggin, after his successful ascent, had fallen with something like a thud. He saw Mrs. Parsons helped from the platform by her proudly flushing husband and instantly surrounded by people anxious to offer congratulations. Wiggin shuddered for he stood quite alone. Those who were in sympathy with him seemed afraid to openly signify it. Even Dan Willis lurked back under the trees, his face flushed with liquor and inward rage.
Pole Baker, however, was more thoughtful of the candidate's comfort. With a queer twinkle of amusement in his eyes, and polishing, with the dexterity of a carver of cherry-stones, his little stick, he approached the candidate.
“Say, Wiggin,” he drawled out, “I want to ax you a question.”