What Answer?. Anna E. Dickinson
fellow I've just been getting a good look at."
"What manner of fellow?"
"Ignorant, selfish, brutal, devilish."
"Tremendous! why don't you bind him over to keep the peace?"
"Because he is like the judge of old time, neither fears God nor respects his image—when his image is carved in ebony, and not ivory."
"What do you call this fellow?"
"Public Opinion."
"This big fellow is abusing and devouring a poor little chap, eh? and the chap's black?"
"True."
"And sometimes the giant is a gentleman in purple and fine linen, otherwise broadcloth; and sometimes in hodden gray, otherwise homespun or slop-shop; and sometimes he cuts the poor little chap with a silver knife, which is rhetoric, and sometimes with a wooden spoon, which is raw-hide. Am I stating it all correctly?"
"All correctly."
"And you've been watching this operation when you had better have been minding your own business, and getting excited when you had better have kept cool, and now want to rush into the fight, drums beating and colors flying, to the rescue of the small one. Don't deny it—it's all written out in your eyes."
"I sha'n't deny it, except about the business and the keeping cool. It's any gentleman's business to interfere between a bully and a weakling that he's abusing; and his blood must be water that does not boil while he 'watches the operation' as you say, and goes in."
"To get well pommelled for his pains, and do no good to any one, himself included. Let the weakling alone. A fellow that can't save himself is not worth saving. If he can't swim nor walk, let him drop under or go to the wall; that's my theory."
"Anglo-Saxon theory—and practice."
"Good theory, excellent practice—in the main. What special phase of it has been disturbing your equanimity?"
"You know the Franklins?"
"Of course: Aunt Mina's son—what's his name?—is a sort of protégé of yours, I believe: what of him?"
"He is cleanly?"
"A nice question. Doubtless."
"Respectable?"
"What are you driving at?"
"Intelligent?"
"Most true."
"Ambitious?"
"Or his looks belie him."
"Faithful, trusty, active, helpful, in every way devoted to my father's service and his work."
"With Sancho, I believe it all because your worship says so."
"Well, this man has just been discharged from my father's employ because seven hundred and forty-two other men gave notice to quit if he remained."
"The reason?"
"His skin."
"The reason is not 'so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door, but it is enough.' Of course they wouldn't work with him, and my uncle Surrey, begging your pardon, should not have attempted anything so Quixotic."
"His skin covering so many excellent qualities, and these qualities gaining recognition—that was the cause. They worked with him so long as he was a servant of servants: so soon as he demonstrated that he could strike out strongly and swim, they knocked him under; and, proving that he could walk alone, they ran hastily to shove him to the wall."
"What! quoting my own words against me?"
"Anglo-Saxon says we are the masters: we monopolize the strength and courage, the beauty, intelligence, power. These creatures—what are they? poor, worthless, lazy, ignorant, good for nothing but to be used as machines, to obey. When lo! one of these dumb machines suddenly starts forth with a man's face; this creature no longer obeys, but evinces a right to command; and Anglo-Saxon speedily breaks him in pieces."
"Come, Willie, I hope you're not going to assert these people our equals—that would be too much."
"They have no intelligence, Anglo-Saxon declares—then refuses them schools, while he takes of their money to help educate his own sons. They have no ambition—then closes upon them every door of honorable advancement, and cries through the key-hole, Serve, or starve. They cannot stand alone, they have no faculty for rising—then, if one of them finds foothold, the ground is undermined beneath him. If a head is seen above the crowd, the ladder is jerked away, and he is trampled into the dust where he is fallen. If he stays in the position to which Anglo-Saxon assigns him, he is a worthless nigger; if he protests against it, he is an insolent nigger; if he rises above it, he is a nigger not to be tolerated at all—to be crushed and buried speedily."
"Now, Willie, 'no more of this, an thou lovest me.' I came not out to-day to listen to an abolition harangue, nor a moral homily, but to have a good time, to be civil and merry withal, if you will allow it. Of course you don't like Franklin's discharge, and of course you have done something to compensate him. I know—you have found him another place. No—you couldn't do that?
"No, I couldn't."
"Well, you've settled him somewhere—confess."
"He has some work for the present; some copying for me, and translating, for this unfortunate is a scholar, you know."
"Very good; then let it rest. Granted the poor devils have a bad time of it, you're not bound to sacrifice yourself for them. If you go on at this pace, you'll bring up with the long-haired, bloomer reformers, and then—God help you. No, you needn't say another word—I sha'n't listen—not one; so. Here we are! school yonder—well situated?"
"Capitally."
"Fine day."
"Very."
"Clara will be charmed to see you."
"You flatter me. I hope so."
"There, now you talk rationally. Don't relapse. We will go up and hear the pretty creatures read their little pieces, and sing their little songs, and see them take their nice blue-ribboned diplomas, and fall in love with their dear little faces, and flirt a bit this evening, and to-morrow I shall take Ma'm'selle Clara home to Mamma Russell, and you may go your ways."
"The programme is satisfactory."
"Good. Come on then."
All Commencement days, at college or young ladies' school, if not twin brothers and sisters, are at least first cousins, with a strong family likeness. Who that has passed through one, or witnessed one, needs any description thereof to furbish up its memories. This of Professor Hale's belonged to the great tribe, and its form and features were of the old established type. The young ladies were charming; plenty of white gowns, plenty of flowers, plenty of smiles, blushes, tremors, hopes, and fears; little songs, little pieces, little addresses, to be sung, to be played, to be read, just as Tom Russell had foreshadowed, and proving to be—
"Just the least of a bore!" as he added after listening awhile; "don't you think so, Surrey?"
"Hush! don't talk."
Tom stared; then followed his cousin's eye, fixed immovably upon one little spot on the platform. "By Jove!" he cried, "what a beauty! As Father Dryden would say, 'this is the porcelain clay of humankind.' No wonder you look. Who is she—do you know?"
"No."
"No! short, clear, and decisive. Don't devour her, Will. Remember the sermon I preached you an hour ago. Come, look at this,"—thrusting a programme into his face—"and stop staring. Why, boy, she has bewitched you—or inspired you,"—surveying him sharply.
And indeed it would seem so. Eyes, mouth, face, instinct with some subtle and thrilling emotion. As gay Tom Russell looked, he involuntarily stretched out his hand, as one would put it between