 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois. Music and text, recorded by Toria's uncle. Chapter 10. Of the Faith of the Fathers. Dim face of beauty, haunting all the world. Fair face of beauty, all too fair to see. Where the lost stars are down the heavens are hurled. There, there alone for thee, may white peace be. Beauty, sad face of beauty, mystery, wonder. What are these dreams to foolish babbling men, Who cry with little noises, Neath the thunder of ages, ground to sand, to a little sand? Fiona MacLeod. It was out in the country, far from home, far from my foster home, on a dark Sunday night. The road wandered from our rambling log house, up the stony bed of a creek, past wheat and corn. Until we could hear dimly across the fields, a rhythmic cadence of song, soft, thrilling, powerful, that swelled and died sorrowfully in our ears. I was a country schoolteacher then, fresh from the east, and had never seen a southern Negro revival. To be sure we in Berkshire were not perhaps as stiff and formal as they in Suffolk of olden time, yet we were very quiet and subdued. And I know not what would have happened those clear Sabbath mornings had someone punctuated the sermon with a wild scream, or interrupted the long prayer with a loud amen. And so, most striking to me as I approached the village and the little plain church perched aloft, was the air of intense excitement that possessed that mass of black folk, a sort of suppressed terror hung in the air and seemed to seize us, a pithy and madness, a demonic possession that lent terrible reality to song and word. The black and massive form of the preacher swayed and quivered as the words crowded to his lips and flew at us in singular eloquence. The people moaned and fluttered, and then the gaunt-chicked brown woman beside me suddenly leaped straight into the air and shrieked like a lost soul. While round about came wail and groan and outcry and a scene of human passion such as I had never conceived before. Those who have not thus witnessed the frenzy of a Negro revival in the untouched backwoods of the south can but dimly realize the religious feeling of the slave. As described, such scenes appear grotesque and funny, but as seen they are awful. Three things characterized this religion of the slave, the preacher, the music, and the frenzy. The preacher is the most unique personality developed by the Negro on American soil, a leader, a politician, an orator, a boss, an intriguer, an idealist. All these he is, and ever to the center of a group of men, now twenty, now a thousand in number. The combination of a certain adroitness with deep-seated earnestness, of tact with consummitability, gave him his preeminence and helps him maintain it. The type of course varies according to time and place, from the West Indies in the sixteenth century to New England in the nineteenth, and from the Mississippi bottoms to cities like New Orleans or New York. The music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody with its touching minor cadences, which, despite caricature and defilement, still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing, yet born on American soil, sprung from the African forests where its counterpart can still be heard. It was adapted, changed, and intensified by the tragic soul life of the slave, until, under the stress of law and whip, it became the one true expression of a people's sorrow, despair, and hope. Finally, the frenzy of shouting, when the spirit of the Lord passed by, and seizing the devotee made him mad with supernatural joy, was the last essential of Negro religion, and the one more devoutly believed in than all the rest. It varied in expression from the silent, rapt countenance, or the low murmur and moan, to the mad abandon of physical fervor, the stamping, shrieking, and shouting, the rushing to and fro, and wild waving of arms, the weeping and laughing, the vision, and the trance. All this is nothing new in the world, but old as religion, as Delphi and Endor. And so firm a hold did it have on the Negro, that many generations firmly believed that without this visible manifestation of the God, there could be no true communion with the invisible. These were the characteristics of Negro religious life, as developed up to the time of emancipation. Since, under the peculiar circumstances of the black man's environment, they were the one expression of his higher life, they are of deep interest to the student of his development, both socially and psychologically. Numerous are the attractive lines of inquiry that he or group themselves. What did slavery mean to the African savage? What was his attitude toward the world and life? What seemed to him good and evil, God and devil? Whither went his longings and strivings, and wherefore were his heart-burnings and disappointments? Answers to such questions can come only from a study of Negro religion as a development, through its gradual changes from the heathenism of the Gold Coast to the institutional Negro Church of Chicago. Moreover, the religious growth of millions of men, even though they be slaves, cannot be without potent influence upon their contemporaries. The Methodists and Baptists of America owe much of their condition to the silent but potent influence of their millions of Negro converts, especially as this noticeable in the South, where theology and religious philosophy are on this account a long way behind the North, and where the religion of the poor whites is a plain copy of Negro thought and methods. The mass of gospel hymns, which has swept through American churches and well-nigh ruined our sense of song, consists largely of debased imitations of Negro melodies made by ears that caught the jingle but not the music, the body but not the soul of the Jubilee songs. It is thus clear that the study of Negro religion is not only a vital part of the history of the Negro in America, but no uninteresting part of American history. The Negro Church of today is the social center of Negro life in the United States, and the most characteristic expression of African character. Take a typical church in a small Virginia town. It is the First Baptist, a roomy brick edifice seating 500 or more persons, tastefully finished in Georgia pine, with a carpet, a small organ, and stained glass windows. Underneath is a large assembly room with benches. This building is the central clubhouse of a community of a thousand or more Negroes. Various organizations meet here, the church proper, the Sunday school, two or three insurance societies, women's societies, secret societies, and mass meetings of various kinds. Entertainments, suppers, and lectures are held beside the five or six regular weekly religious services. Considerable sums of money are collected and expended here. Employment is found for the idol, strangers are introduced, news is disseminated, and charity distributed. At the same time, this social, intellectual, and economic center is a religious center of great power. Depravity, sin, redemption, heaven, hell, and damnation are preached twice a Sunday after the crops are laid by, and few indeed of the community have the hardy hood to withstand conversion. Back of this more formal religion, the church often stands as a real conserver of morals, a strengthener of family life, and the final authority on what is good and right. Thus one can see in the Negro church today, reproduced in microcosm, all the great world from which the Negro was cut off by color prejudice and social condition. In the great city churches, the same tendency is noticeable, and in many respects emphasized. A great church, like the Bethel of Philadelphia, has over eleven hundred members, an edifice seating fifteen hundred persons, and valued at one hundred thousand dollars, an annual budget of five thousand dollars, and a government consisting of a pastor with several assisting local preachers, an executive and legislative board, financial boards and tax collectors, general church meetings from making laws, subdivided groups led by class leaders, a company of militia, and twenty-four auxiliary societies. The activity of a church like this is immense and far-reaching, and the bishops who preside over these organizations throughout the land are among the most powerful Negro rulers in the world. Such churches are really governments of men. And consequently, a little investigation reveals the curious fact that, in the South at least, practically every American Negro is a church member. Some, to be sure, are not regularly enrolled, and a few do not habitually attend services. But, practically, a proscribed people must have a social center, and that center for this people is the Negro Church. The status of 1890 showed nearly twenty-four thousand Negro churches in the country, with a total enrolled membership of over two-and-a-half millions, or ten actual church members, to every twenty-eight persons, and in some southern states, one in every two persons. Besides these, there is the large number who, while not enrolled as members, attend and take part in many of the activities of the church. There is an organized Negro church for every sixty black families in the nation, and in some states, for every forty families, owning, on an average, a thousand dollars' worth of property each, or nearly twenty-six million dollars in all. Such, then, is the large development of the Negro church, since emancipation. The question now is, what have been the successive steps of this social history, and what are the present tendencies? First, we must realize that no such institution as the Negro Church could ever rear itself without definite historical foundations. These foundations we can find if we remember that the social history of the Negro did not start in America. He was brought from a definite social environment, the polygamous clan life under the headship of the chief, and the potent influence of the priest. His religion was nature worship, with profound belief in invisible surrounding influences, good and bad, and his worship was through incantation and sacrifice. The first rude change in this life was the slave ship, and the West Indian sugar fields. The plantation organization replaced the clan and tribe, and the white master replaced the chief, with far greater and more despotic powers. Forced and long-continued toil became the rule of life. The old ties of blood relationship and kinship disappeared, and instead of the family appeared a new polygamy and polyandry, which in some cases almost reached promiscuity. It was a terrific social revolution, and yet some traces were retained of the former group life, and the chief remaining institution was the priest or medicine man. He early appeared on the plantation and found his function as the healer of the sick, the interpreter of the unknown, the comforter of the sorrowing, the supernatural avenger of wrong, and the one who rudely, but picturesquely, expressed the longing, disappointment, and resentment of a stolen and oppressed people. Thus, as bard, physician, judge, and priest, within the narrow limits allowed by the slave system, rose the Negro preacher, and under him the first church was not at first by any means Christian, nor definitely organized. Rather, it was an adaptation and mingling of heathen rites among the members of each plantation, and roughly designated as voodooism. Association with the masters, missionary effort, and motives of expediency gave these rites an early veneer of Christianity, and after the lapse of many generations, the Negro church became Christian. Two characteristic things must be noticed in regard to the church. First, it became almost entirely Baptist and Methodist in faith. Secondly, as a social institution, it antedated by many decades the monogamic Negro home. From the very circumstances of its beginning, the church was confined to the plantation, and consisted primarily of a series of disconnected units. Although later on some freedom of movement was allowed, still, this geographical limitation was always important. And was one cause of the spread of the decentralized and democratic Baptist faith among the slaves. At the same time, the visible rite of baptism appealed strongly to their mystic temperament. Today, the Baptist church is still largest in membership among Negroes, and has a million and a half communicants. Next in popularity came the churches organized in connection with the white neighboring churches, chiefly Baptist and Methodist, with a few Episcopalian and others. The Methodists still formed the second greatest denomination with nearly a million members. The faith of these two leading denominations was more suited to the slave church from the prominence they gave to religious feeling and fervor. The Negro membership in other denominations has always been small and relatively unimportant, although the Episcopalians and Presbyterians are gaining among the more intelligent classes today, and the Catholic church is making headway in certain sections. After emancipation and still earlier in the north, the Negro churches largely severed such affiliations as they had had with the white churches, either by choice or by compulsion. The Baptist churches became independent, but the Methodists were compelled early to unite for purposes of Episcopal government. This gave rise to the great African Methodist church, the greatest Negro organization in the world, to the Zion church and the colored Methodists, and to the black conferences and churches in this and other denominations. The second fact noted, namely that the Negro church anti-dates the Negro home, leads to an explanation of much that is paradoxical in this communistic institution and in the morals of its members. But especially, it leads us to regard this institution as peculiarly the expression of the inner ethical life of a people in a sense seldom true elsewhere. Let us turn then from the outer physical development of the church to the more important inner ethical life of the people who compose it. The Negro has already been pointed out many times as a religious animal, a being of that deep emotional nature which turns instinctively toward the supernatural. Endowed with a rich tropical imagination and a keen, delicate appreciation of nature, the transplanted African lived in a world animate with gods and devils, elves and witches, full of strange influences, of good to be implored, of evil to be propitiated. Slavery, then, was to him the dark triumph of evil over him. All the hateful powers of the underworld were striving against him, and a spirit of revolt and revenge filled his heart. He called up all the resources of heathenism to aid, exorcism and witchcraft, the mysterious OB worship with its barbarous rites, spells, and blood sacrifice even now and then of human victims. Weird midnight orgies and mystic conjurations were invoked, the witch-woman and the voodoo priest became the center of Negro group life, and that bane of vague superstition which characterizes the unlettered Negro even today was deepened and strengthened. In spite, however, of such successes as that of the fierce maroons, the Danish blacks and others, the spirit of revolt gradually died away under the untiring energy and superior strength of the slave masters. By the middle of the 18th century, the black slave had sunk, with hushed murmurs, to his place at the bottom of a new economic system, and was unconsciously ripe for a new philosophy of life. Nothing suited his condition then better than the doctrines of passive submission embodied in the newly learned Christianity. Slave masters early realized this, and cheerfully aided religious propaganda within certain bounds. The long system of repression and degradation of the Negro tended to emphasize the elements of his character which made him a valuable chattel. Courtesy became humility, moral strength degenerated into submission, and the exquisite native appreciation of the beautiful became an infinite capacity for dumb suffering. The Negro, losing the joy of this world, eagerly seized upon the offered conceptions of the next. The avenging spirit of the Lord enjoining patience in this world, under sorrow and tribulation, until the great day when he should lead his dark children home. This became his comforting dream. His preacher repeated the prophecy, and his bards sang, Children, we all shall be free when the Lord shall appear. This deep religious fatalism, painted so beautifully in Uncle Tom, came soon to breed, as all fatalistic faiths will, the sensualist side by side with the martyr. Under the lax moral life of the plantation, where marriage was a force, laziness a virtue, and property a theft, a religion of resignation and submission degenerated easily in less strenuous minds, into a philosophy of indulgence and crime. Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of today had their seed in this period of the slaves' ethical growth. Here it was that the home was ruined under the very shadow of the church, white and black. Here, habits of shiftlessness took root, and sullen hopelessness replaced hopeful strife. With the beginning of the abolition movement and the gradual growth of a class of free Negroes came a change. We often neglect the influence of the freedmen before the war, because of the paucity of his numbers, and the small weight he had in the history of the nation. But we must not forget that his chief influence was internal, was exerted on the black world, and that there he was the ethical and social leader. Huddled as he was in a few centers like Philadelphia, New York, and New Orleans, the masses of the freedmen sank into poverty and listlessness, but not all of them. The free Negro leader early arose, and his chief characteristic was intense earnestness and deep feeling on the slavery question. Freedom became to him a real thing and not a dream. His religion became darker and more intense, and into his ethics crept a note of revenge, into his songs a day of reckoning close at hand. The coming of the Lord swept this side of death, and came to be a thing hoped for in this day. Through fugitive slaves and irrepressible discussion, this desire for freedom seized the black millions still in bondage, and became their one ideal of life. The black bards caught new notes, and sometimes even dared to sing, freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me. Before I'll be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord and be free. For fifty years Negro religion thus transformed itself, and identified itself with the dream of abolition, until that which was a radical fad in the white north, and an anarchistic plot in the white south, had become a religion to the black world. Thus when emancipation finally came, it seemed to the freedmen a literal coming of the Lord. His fervent imagination was stirred as never before by the tramp of armies, the blood and dust of battle, and the wail and whirl of social upheaval. He stood dumb and motionless before the whirlwind. What had he to do with it? Was it not the Lord's doing, and marvelous in his eyes? Joyed and bewildered with what came, he stood awaiting new wonders, till the inevitable age of reactions swept over the nation, and brought the crisis of today. It is difficult to explain clearly the present critical stage of Negro religion. First, we must remember that living as the blacks do in close contact with the great modern nation, and sharing although imperfectly the sole life of that nation, they must necessarily be affected more or less directly by all the religious and ethical forces that are today moving the United States. These questions and movements are, however, overshadowed and dwarfed by the, to them, all important question of their civil, political, and economic status. They must perpetually discuss the Negro problem, must live, move, and have their being in it, and interpret all else in its light or darkness. With this come, too, peculiar problems of their inner life. Of the status of women, the maintenance of home, the training of children, the accumulation of wealth, and the prevention of crime, all this must mean a time of intense ethical ferment, of religious heart searching, and intellectual unrest. From the double life every American Negro must live as a Negro, and as an American, as swept on by the current of the 19th, while yet struggling in the eddies of the 15th century, from this must arise a painful self-consciousness, an almost morbid sense of personality, and a moral hesitancy which is fatal to self-confidence. The worlds within and without the veil of color are changing, and changing rapidly, but not at the same rate, and not in the same way, and this must produce a peculiar wrenching of the soul, a peculiar sense of doubt and bewilderment. Such a double life, with double thoughts, double duties, and double social classes, must give rise to double words and double ideals, and tempt the mind to pretense, or revolt, to hypocrisy, or radicalism. In some such doubtful words and phrases can one perhaps most clearly picture the peculiar ethical paradox that faces the Negro of today, and is tinging and changing his religious life. Feeling that his rights and his dearest ideals are being trampled upon, that the public conscience is ever more deaf to his righteous appeal, and that all the reactionary forces of prejudice, greed, and revenge are daily gaining new strength and fresh allies, the Negro faces no enviable dilemma. Conscious of his impotence and pessimistic, he often becomes bitter and vindictive, and his religion instead of a worship is a complaint and a curse, a wail rather than a hope, a sneer rather than a faith. On the other hand, another type of mind, shrewder and keener, and more tortuous too, sees in the very strength of the anti-Negro movement its patent weaknesses, and with Jesuitic casuistry is deterred by no ethical considerations in the endeavor to turn this weakness to the black man's strength. Thus we have two great and hardly reconcilable streams of thought and ethical strivings. The danger of the one lies in anarchy, that of the other in hypocrisy. The one type of Negro stands almost ready to curse God and die, and the other is too often found a traitor to write, and a coward before force. The one is wedded to ideal's remote, whimsical, perhaps impossible of realization. The other forgets that life is more than meat and the body more than remnant. But after all is not this simply the writhing of the age transformed into black. The triumph of the lie, which today, with its false culture, faces the hideousness of the anarchist assassin. Today the two groups of Negroes, the one in the north, the other in the south, represent these divergent ethical tendencies, the first tending toward radicalism, the other toward hypocritical compromise. It is no idle regret with which the White South mourns the loss of the old-time Negro, the frank, honest, simple old servant, who stood for the earlier religious age of submission and humility. With all his laziness and lack of many elements of true manhood, he was at least open-hearted, faithful, and sincere. Today he is gone. But who is to blame for his going? Is it not those very persons who mourn for him? Is it not the tendency, born of reconstruction and reaction, to found a society on lawlessness and deception, to temper with the moral fiber of a naturally honest and straightforward people, until the Whites threaten to become ungovernable tyrants, and the blacks, criminals, and hypocrites? Deception is the natural defense of the weak against the strong, and the South used it for many years against its conquerors. Today it must be prepared to see its black proletariat turn that same two-edged weapon against itself. And how natural this is. The death of Denmark Vasey and Nat Turner proved long since to the Negro the present hopelessness of physical defense, political defense is becoming less and less available, and economic defense is still only partially effective. But there is a patent defense at hand, the defense of deception and flattery, of cajoling and lying. It is the same defense which peasants of the Middle Ages used, and which left its stamp on their character for centuries. Today the young Negro of the South who would succeed cannot be frank and outspoken, honest and self-assertive, but rather he is daily tempted to be silent and wary, politic and sly. He must flatter and be pleasant, endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong. In too many cases he sees positive personal advantage in deception and lying. His real thoughts, his real aspirations must be guarded and whispers. He must not criticize, he must not complain. Patience, humility and adroitness must in these growing black youth replace impulse, manliness and courage. With this sacrifice there is an economic opening and perhaps peace and some prosperity. Without this there is riot, migration or crime. Nor is this situation peculiar to the Southern United States. Is it not rather the only method by which undeveloped races have gained the rights to share modern culture? The price of culture is a lie. On the other hand, in the North the tendency is to emphasize the radicalism of the Negro. Driven from his birthright in the South, by a situation at which every fiber of his more outspoken and assertive nature revolts, he finds himself in a land where he can scarcely earn a decent living amid the harsh competition and the color discrimination. At the same time, through schools and periodicals, discussions and lectures, he is intellectually quickened and awakened. The soul, long pent up and dwarfed, suddenly expands in newfound freedom. What wonder that every tendency is to excess? Radical complaint, radical remedies, bitter denunciation or angry silence. Some sink, some rise. The criminal and the sensualist leave the church for the gambling hell and the brothel and fill the slums of Chicago and Baltimore. The better classes segregate themselves from the group life of both white and black and form an aristocracy, cultured but pessimistic, whose bitter criticism stings while it points out no way of escape. They despise the submission and subserviency of the Southern Negroes, but offer no other means by which a poor and oppressed minority can exist side by side with its masters. Feeling deeply and keenly the tendencies and opportunities of the age in which they live, their souls are bitter at the fate which drops the veil between. And the very fact that this bitterness is natural and justifiable only serves to intensify it and make it more maddening. Between the two extreme types of ethical attitude which I have thus sought to make clear wavers the mass of the millions of Negroes north and south, and their religious life and activity partake of this social conflict within their ranks. Their churches are differentiating. Now into groups of cold, fashionable devotees, in no way distinguishable from similar white groups, save in color of skin. Now into large social and business institutions catering to the desire for information and amusement of their members, warily avoiding unpleasant questions both within and without the black world, and preaching in effect, if not word, dum vivimas vivamos. But back of this still broods silently the deep religious feeling of the real Negro heart, the stirring, unguided might of powerful human souls who have lost the guiding star of the past, and seek in the great night a new religious ideal. Someday the awakening will come when the pent-up vigor of ten million souls shall sweep irresistibly toward the goal. Out of the valley of the shadow of death where all that makes life worth living, liberty, justice, and right is marked for white people only. End of chapter 10. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois. Music and Text. Recorded by Toria's Uncle. Chapter 11. Of the Passing of the First Born. O sister, sister, thy first begotten, the hands that cling, and the feet that follow, the voice of the child's blood crying yet, who hath remembered me? Who hath forgotten? Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow. But the world shall end when I forget, Swinburne. Swinburne, unto you a child is born, sang the bit of yellow paper that fluttered into my room one brown October morning. Then the fear of fatherhood mingled wildly with the joy of creation. I wondered how it looked, and how it felt. What were its eyes, and how its hair curled and crumpled itself? And I thought in awe of her, she who had slept with death to tear a man-child from underneath her heart, while I was unconsciously wondering. I fled to my wife and child, repeating the while, to myself half-wonderingly, wife and child, wife and child. Fled fast and faster than boat and steam-car, and yet must ever impatiently await them. Away from the hard-voiced city, away from the flickering sea, into my known Berkshire Hills that sit all sadly guarding the gates of Massachusetts. Up the stairs I ran, to the wan mother and whimpering babe, to the sanctuary on whose altar at life, at my bidding, had offered itself to win a life, and won. What is this tiny formless thing, this newborn wail from an unknown world, all head and voice? I handle it curiously and watch perplexed its winking, breathing and sneezing. I did not love it then, and seemed a ludicrous thing to love. But her I loved. My girl mother, she whom now I saw unfolding like the glory of the morning, the transfigured woman. Through her I came to love the we thing, as it grew strong, as its little soul unfolded itself in twitter and cry and half-formed word, and as its eyes caught the gleam and flash of life. How beautiful he was! With his olive-tinted flesh and dark gold ringlets, his eyes of mingled blue and brown, his perfect little limbs, and the soft voluptuous roll which the blood of Africa had molded into his features. I held him in my arms, after we had sped away from our southern home. I held him and glanced at the hot red soil of Georgia, and the breathless city of a hundred hills, and felt a vague unrest. Why was his hair tinted with gold, and Eviloman was golden hair in my life? Why had not the brown of his eyes crushed out and killed the blue, for brown were his father's eyes and his father's father's? And thus in the land of the color-line I saw, as it fell across my baby, the shadow of the veil. Within the veil was he born, said I, and there within shall he live, a negro and a negro's son. Holding in that little head, ah, bitterly, the unbound pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny devil. His dimpled hand, ah, wearily, to a hope, not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright, wondering eyes that peer into my soul, a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie, I saw the shadow of the veil as it passed over my baby. I saw the cold city towering above the blood-red land. The face beside his little cheek showed him the star-children and the twinkling lights as they began to flash, and stilled with an even song, the unvoiced terror of my life. So sturdy and masterful he grew, so filled with bubbling life, so tremulous with the unspoken wisdom of a life, but eighteen months distant from the all-life. We were not far from worshiping this revelation of the divine, my wife and I. Her own life builded and molded itself upon the child. He tinged her every dream, and idealized her every effort. No hands but hers must touch and garnish those little limbs. No dress or frill must touch them that had not wearied her fingers. No voice but hers could coax him off to dreamland. And she and he together spoke some soft and unknown tongue, and in it held communion. I, too, amused above his little white bed. Saw the strength of my own arm stretched onward through the ages, through the newer strength of his. Saw the dream of my black father's stagger a step onward in the wild phantasm of the world. Heard in his baby voice the voice of the prophet that was to rise within the veil. And so we dreamed, and loved, and planned by fall and winter, and the full flush of the long southern spring, till the hot winds rolled from the fetid gulf, till the roses shivered, and the stern sun quivered its awful light over the hills of Atlanta. And then one night the little feet padded wearily to the wee white bed. And the tiny hands trembled, and a warm flushed face tossed on the pillow. And we knew baby was sick. Ten days he lay there, a swift week, and three endless days wasting away. Cheerily the mother nursed him the first days and laughed into the little eyes that smiled again. Tenderly she hovered round him till the smile fled away, and fear crouched beside the little bed. Then the day ended not, and the night was a dreamless terror. And joy and sleep slipped away. I hear now that voice at midnight calling me from dull and dreamless trance, crying, the shadow of death, the shadow of death. Out into the starlight I crept to rouse the gray physician, the shadow of death, the shadow of death. The hours trembled on, the night listened, the ghastly dawn glided like a tired thing across the lamplight. Then we two alone looked upon the child as he turned toward us, with great eyes, and stretched his string-like hands, the shadow of death. And we spoke no word, and turned away. He died, and even tied. When the sun lay like a brooding sorrow above the western hills, veiling its face. When the winds spoke not, and the trees, the great green trees he loved, stood motionless. I saw his breath beat quicker and quicker, pause. And then his little soul leapt like a star that travels in the night, and left the world of darkness in its train. The day changed not. The same tall trees peeped in at the windows, the same green grass glinted in the setting sun, only in the chamber of death writhe the world's most piteous thing. A childless mother, I shirk not. I long for work. I pant for a life full of striving, I am no coward to shrink before the rugged rush of the storm, nor even quail before the awful shadow of the veil. But harken, O death, is not this my life hard enough? Is not that dull land that stretches its sneering web about me cold enough? Is not all the world beyond these four little walls pitiless enough but that thou must needs enter here? Thou, O death, about my head the thundering storm beat like a heartless voice, and the crazy forest pulsed with the curses of the weak. But what cared I within my home beside my wife and baby boy? Was thou so jealous of one little coin of happiness that thou must needs enter there? Thou, O death, the perfect life was his. All joy and love, with tears to make it brighter, sweet as a summer's day beside the Housatonic. The world loved him, the women kissed his curls, the men looked gravely into his wonderful eyes, and the children hovered and fluttered about him. I can see him now changing like the sky from sparkling laughter to darkening frowns. And then, to wondering thoughtfulness, as he watched the world, he knew no color line, poor dear. And the veil, though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his son. He loved the white matron, he loved his black nurse, and in his little world walked souls alone, uncolored and unclothed. I, yea, all men, were larger and purer by the infinite breadth of that one little life. She, who in simple clearness of visions sees beyond the stars, said when he had flown, he will be happy there. He ever loved beautiful things? And I, far more ignorant and blind by the web of my own weaving, sit alone, winding words and muttering, if still he be, and he be there and there be a there. Let him be happy, no fate. Blythe was the morning of his burial with bird and song and sweet-smelling flowers. The trees whispered to the grass. But the children sat with hushed faces, and yet it seemed a ghostly, unreal day, the wraith of life. We seemed to rumble down an unknown street behind a little white bundle of posies with the shadow of a song in our ears. The busy city dinned about us. They did not say much. Those pale-faced, hurrying men and women, they did not say much. They only glanced and said, Niggers, we could not lay him in the ground there in Georgia, for the earth there is strangely red. So we bore him away to the northward, with his flowers and his little folded hands in vain. In vain. For where, oh God, beneath thy broad blue sky shall my dark baby rest in peace, where reverence dwells and goodness and a freedom that is free. All that day and all that night there sat an awful gladness in my heart. Nay, blame me not if I see the world thus darkly through the veil. And my soul whispers ever to me, saying, Not dead, not dead but escaped. Not bond, but free. No bitter meanness now shall sicken his baby heart till it die a living death. No taunt shall madden his happy boyhood. Fool that I was to think or wish that this little soul should grow choked and deformed within the veil. I might have known that yonder deep, unworldly look, that ever and a non-floated past his eyes was fearing far beyond this narrow now. In the poise of his little curl-crowned head did there not sit all that wild pride of being, which his father had hardly crushed in his own heart? For what, forsooth, shall a negro want with pride amid the studied humiliations of fifty million fellows? Well sped, my boy, before the world had dubbed your ambition insolence and held your ideals unattainable, and taught you to cringe and bow. Better far this nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you? Idle words. He might have borne his burden more bravely than we. I, and founded lighter, too. Someday. For surely, surely this is not the end. Surely there shall yet dawn some mighty morning to lift the veil and set the prison free. Not for me I shall die in my bonds, but for fresh young souls who have not known the night and waken to the morning. A morning when men ask of the workmen not, is he white? But can he work? When men ask artists not, are they black? But do they know? Some morning this may be long, long years to come, but now there wails on that dark shore within the veil, the same deep voice thou shalt forgo, and all have I foregone at that command. And with small complaint all save that fair young form that lies so coldly wed with death in the nest I had builded. If one must have gone, why not I? Why may I not rest me from this restlessness and sleep from this white waking? Was not the world's olympic time in his young hands and is not my time waning? Are there so many workers in the vineyard that the fair promise of this little body could lightly be tossed away? The wretched of my race that lined the alleys of the nation sit fatherless and unmothered, but love sat beside his cradle and in his ear wisdom waited to speak. Perhaps now he knows the all-love and needs not to be wise. Sleep then, child, sleep till I sleep and waken to a baby voice and the ceaseless patter of little feet above the veil. End of Chapter 11 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois Music and text recorded by Toria's uncle Chapter 12 Of Alexander Crummel Then from the dawn it seemed there came but faint as from beyond the limit of the world like the last echo born of a great cry sounds as if some fair city were one voice around a king returning from his wars. Tennyson This is the story of a human heart. The tale of a black boy who many long years ago began to struggle with life that he might know the world and know himself. Three temptations he met on those dark dunes that lay gray and dismal before the wonder eyes of the child the temptation of hate that stood out against the red dawn the temptation of despair that darkened noonday and the temptation of doubt that ever steals along with twilight. Above all you must hear of the veils he crossed the valley of humiliation and the valley of the shadow of death. I saw Alexander Crummel first at a Wilberforce commencement season amid its bustle and crush tall frail and black he stood with simple dignity and an unmistakable air of good breeding I talked with him apart where the storming of the lusty young orators could not harm us I spoke to him politely then curiously then eagerly as I began to feel the fineness of his character his calm courtesy the sweetness of his strength and his fair blending of the hope and truth of life Instinctively I bowed before this man as one bows before the prophets of the world some seer he seemed that came not from the crimson past or the gray to come but from the pulsing now that mocking world which seemed to me at once so light and dark so splendid and sorted four score years had he wandered in this same world of mine within the veil he was born with a Missouri compromise and lay a dying amid the echoes of Manila and El Canay stirring times for living times dark to look back upon darker to look forward to the black-faced lad that paused over his mud and marbles 70 years ago saw puzzling vistas as he looked down the world the slave ship still groaned across the Atlantic faint cries burdened the southern breeze and the great black father whispered mad tales of cruelty into those young ears from the low doorway the mother silently watched her boy at play and at nightfall sought him eagerly lest the shadows should bear him away to the land of slaves so his young mind worked and winced and shaped curiously a vision of life and in the midst of that vision ever stood one dark figure alone ever with the hard thick countenance of that bitter father and a form that fell in vast and shapeless folds thus the temptation of hate grew and shadowed the growing child gliding stealthily into his laughter fading into his play and seizing his dreams by day and night with rough rude turbulence so the black boy asked of sky and sun and flower that never answered why? and loved as he grew neither the world nor the world's rough ways strange temptation for a child you may think and yet in this wide land today a thousand thousand dark children brewed before this same temptation and feel its cold and shuttering arms for them perhaps someone will someday lift the veil will come tenderly and cheerily into those sad little lives and brush the brooding hate away just as bariah green strode in upon the life of alexander crummel and before the bluff kind-hearted man the shadow seemed less dark bariah green had a school in onidia county new york with a score of mischievous boys i'm going to bring a black boy here to educate said bariah green if only a crank and an abolitionist would have dared to say ho ho left the boys yes said his wife and alexander came once before the black boy had sought a school had traveled cold and hungry four hundred miles up into free new hampshire to canaan but the godly farmers hitched ninety yoke of oxen to the abolition schoolhouse and dragged it into the middle of the swamp the black boy trudged away the nineteenth was the first century of human sympathy the age when half-wonderingly we began to describe in others that transfigured spark of divinity which we call myself when claud hoppers and peasants and tramps and thieves and millionaires and sometimes negroes became throbbing souls whose warm pulsing life touched us so nearly that we half gasped with surprise crying thou too? has thou seen sorrow? and the dull waters of hopelessness? has thou known life? and then all helplessly we peered into those other worlds and wailed oh world of worlds how shall man make you one? so in that little oneida school there came to those schoolboys a revelation of thought and longing beneath one black skin of which they had not dreamed before and to the lonely boy came a new dawn of sympathy and inspiration the shadowy formless thing the temptation of hate that hovered between him and the world grew fainter and less sinister it did not wholly fade away but diffused itself and lingered thick at the edges through it the child now first saw the blue and gold of life the sun-swept road that ran twixed the heaven and earth until in one far-off one wavering line they met and kissed a vision of life came to the growing boy mystic wonderful light his head stretched himself breathed deep of the fresh new air yonder behind the forests he heard strange sounds then glinting through the trees he saw far far away the bronzed host of a nation calling calling faintly calling loudly he heard the hateful clank of their chains he felt them cringe and grovel and there arose within him a protest and a prophecy and he girded himself a voice and vision called him to be a priest a seer to lead the uncalled out of the house of bondage he saw the headless host turn toward him like the whirling of mad waters he stretched forth his hands eagerly and then even as he stretched them suddenly there swept across the vision the temptation of despair they were not wicked men the problem of life is not the problem of the wicked they were calm bishops of the apostolic church of God and strove toward righteousness they said slowly it is all very natural it is even commendable but the general theological seminary of the Episcopal church cannot admit a negro and when that thin half grotesque figure still haunted their doors they put their hands kindly half sorrowfully on his shoulders and said now of course we we know how you feel about it but you see it is impossible that is well it is premature sometime we trust sincerely trust all such distinctions will fade away but now the world is as it is this was the temptation of despair and the young man fought it doggedly like some grave shadow he flitted by those halls pleading arguing half angrily demanding admittance until there came the final no until men hustled the disturber away marked him as foolish unreasonable and injudicious a vain rebel against God's law and then from that vision splendid all the glory slowly faded away and left an earth grey and stern rolling on beneath a dark despair even the kind hands that stretched themselves toward him from out the depths of that dull morning seemed but parts of the purple shadows he saw them coldly and asked why should I strive by special grace when the way of the world is closed to me all gently yet the hands urged him on the hands of young John Jay that daring fathers, daring son the hands of the good folk of Boston that free city and yet with a way to the priesthood of the church open at last before him the cloud lingered there and even when in old St. Paul's the venerable bishop raised his white arms above the negro deacon even then the burden had not lifted from that heart for there had passed a glory from the earth and yet the fire through which Alexander Krummel went did not burn in vain slowly and more soberly he took up again his plan of life more critically he studied the situation deep down below the slavery and servitude of the negro people he saw their fatal weaknesses which long years of mistreatment had emphasized the dearth of strong moral character of unbending righteousness he felt was their great shortcoming and here he would begin he would gather the best of his people into some little episcopal chapel and their lead teach and inspire them till the leaven spread till the children grew till the world hearkened till till and then across his dream gleamed some faint afterglow of that first fair vision of youth only an afterglow for there had passed a glory from the earth one day it was in 1842 when he died was struggling merely with the May winds of New England he stood at last in his own chapel in Providence a priest of the church the day is sped by and the dark young clergyman labored he wrote his sermons carefully he intoned his prayers with a soft earnest voice he haunted the streets and accosted the wayfarers he visited the sick and knelt beside the dying he worked month by month and yet month by month the congregation dwindled week by week the hollow walls echoed more sharply and day by day the calls came fewer and fewer and day by day the third temptation sat clearer and still more clearly within the veil the temptation as it were bland and smiling with just a shade of mockery and its smooth tones first it came casually in the cadence yes or perhaps more definitely what do you expect in voice and gesture lay the doubt the temptation of doubt how he hated it and stormed at it furiously of course they are capable he cried of course they can learn and strive and achieve and of course added the temptation softly they do nothing of the sort of all the three temptations this one struck the deepest hate he had outgrown so childish a thing despair he had steeled his right arm against it and fought it with the vigor of determination but to doubt the worth of his life work to doubt the destiny and capability of the race his soul loved because it was his to find listless squalor instead of eager endeavor to hear his own lips whispering they do not care they cannot know they are dumb driven cattle why cast your pearls before swine this this seemed more than man could bear and he closed the door and sank upon the steps of the chancel and cast his robe upon the floor and writhed the evening sunbeams had set the dust to dancing in the gloomy chapel when he arose he folded his vestments in the hymn books and closed the great bible he stepped out into the twilight looked back upon the narrow little pulpit with a weary smile and locked the door then he walked briskly to the bishop and told the bishop what the bishop already knew I have failed he said simply and gaining courage by the confession he added what I need is a larger constituency there are comparatively few I must go where the field is wider and try again so the bishop sent him to Philadelphia with a letter to bishop Ondredonk bishop Ondredonk lived at the head of six white steps corpulent, red faced and the author of several thrilling tracts on apostolic succession it was after dinner and the bishop had settled himself for a pleasant season of contemplation when the bell must needs ring and there must burst in upon the bishop a letter and a thin, ungainly negro bishop Ondredonk read the letter hastily and frowned fortunately his mind was already clear on this point and he cleared his brow and looked at Kreml then he said slowly and impressively I will receive you into this diocese on one condition no negro priest can sit in my church convention and no negro church must ask for a representation there I sometimes fancy that I can see that tableau the frail black figure nervously twitching his hat before the massive abdomen of bishop Ondredonk his threadbare coat thrown against the dark woodwork of the bookcases where foxes, lives of the martyrs nestled happily beside the whole duty of man I seem to see the wide eyes of the negro wander past doors of the cabinet glow in the sunlight a little blue fly is trying to cross the yawning keyhole he marches briskly up to it peers into the chasm in a surprised sort of way and rubs his feelers reflectively then he assays its depths and finding it bottomless draws back again the dark-faced priest finds himself wondering if the fly too has faced its valley of humiliation and if it will plunge into it when low it spreads its tiny wings and buzzes merely across leaving the watcher wingless and alone then the full weight of his burden fell upon him the rich walls wheeled away and before him lay the cold rough moor winding on through life cut in twain by one thick granite ridge here the valley of humiliation yonder the valley of the shadow of death and I know not which be darker no not I but this I know in yonder veil of the humbles stand today a million swarthy men who willingly would bear the whips and scorns of time the oppressors wrong the proud men's contumely the pangs of despised love the laws delay the insolence of office the patient merit of the worthy takes all this and more would they bear did they but know that this were sacrifice and not a meaner thing so surged the thought within that lone black breast the bishop cleared his throat suggestively then recollecting that there was really nothing to say considerably said nothing only sat tapping his foot impatiently but Alexander Krummel said slowly and heavily I will never enter your diocese on such terms and saying this he turned and passed into the valley of the shadow of death you might have noted only the physical dying the shattered frame and hacking cough but in that soul lay deeper death than that he found a chapel in New York the church of his father he labored for it in poverty and starvation scorned by his fellow priests half in despair he wandered across the sea a beggar without stretched hands Englishmen clasped them Wilberforce and Stanley Thirlwell and English even Froud and Macaulay Sir Benjamin Brody bad him rest awhile at Queens College in Cambridge and there he lingered struggling for health of body and mind with a degree in 53 restless still and unsatisfied he turned toward Africa and for long years amid the spawn of the slave smugglers sought a new heaven and a new earth so the man groped for light all this was not life it was the world wandering of a soul in search of itself the striving of one who vainly sought his place in the world ever haunted by the shadow of a death the passing of a soul that has missed its duty 20 years he wandered 20 years and more and yet the hard rasping question kept gnawing within him what in God's name am I on earth for in the narrow New York parish his soul seemed cramped and smothered in the fine old air of the English University he heard the millions wailing over the sea in the wild fever cursed swamps of West Africa he stood helpless and alone you will not wonder at his weird pilgrimage you who in the swift whirl of living amid its cold paradox and marvelous vision have fronted life and asked its riddle face to face and if you find that riddle hard to read remember that yonder black boy finds it just a little harder if it is difficult for you to find and face your duty it is a shade more difficult for him if your heart sickened in the blood and dust of battle remember that to him the dust is thicker and the battle fiercer no wonder the wanderers fall no wonder we point to thief and murderer and haunting prostitute and the never ending throng of unhurst dead the valley of the shadow of death gives few of its pilgrims back to the world but Alexander Crummel it gave back out of the temptation of hate and burned by the fire of despair triumphant over doubt and steeled by sacrifice against humiliation he turned at last home across the waters humble and strong gentle and determined he bent to all the jibes and prejudices to all hatred and discrimination with that rare courtesy which is the armor of pure souls he fought among his own the low, the grasping and the wicked with that unbending righteousness which is the sword of the just he never faltered he seldom complained he simply worked inspiring the young rebuking the old helping the weak guiding the strong so he grew and brought within his wide influence all that was best without knew not nor dreamed of that full power within that mighty inspiration which the dull gauze of caste decreed that most men should not know and now that he is gone I sweep the veil away and cry low the soul to whose dear memory I bring this little tribute I can see his face still dark and heavy lined beneath his snowy hair lighting and shading now with inspiration for the future now an innocent pain at some human wickedness now with sorrow at some hard memory from the past the more I met Alexander Kreml the more I felt how much that world was losing which knew so little of him in another age he might have sat among the elders of the land in purple bordered toga in another country mothers might have sung him to the cradles he did his work he did it nobly and well and yet I sorrowed that here he worked alone with so little human sympathy his name today in this broad land means little and comes to fifty million years laden with no incense of memory or emulation and herein lies the tragedy of the age not that men are poor all men know something of poverty not that men are wicked who is good not that men are ignorant what is truth nay but that men know so little of men he sat one morning gazing toward the sea he smiled and said the gate is rusty on their hinges that night at star rise a wind came moaning out of the west to blow the gate ajar and then the soul I loved fled like a flame across the seas and in its seat sat death I wonder where he is today I wonder if in that dim world beyond as he came gliding in there rose on some one throne a king a dark and pierced Jew who knows the writhings of the earthly damned saying as he laid those heart-rung talents down well done well round about the morning stars sat singing end of chapter 12 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois music and text recorded by Toria's uncle chapter 13 of the coming of John what bring they need the midnight beside the river sea they bring the human heart wherein no nightly calm can be that dropeth never with the wind nor drieth with the dew how calm at God thy calm is broad to cover spirits too the river floweth on Mrs. Browning Carlisle Street runs westward from the center of Johnstown across a great black bridge down a hill and up again by little shops and meat markets past single-storied homes until suddenly it stops against a wide green lawn it is a broad restful place with two large buildings outlined against the west when at evening the winds come swelling from the east and the great pall of the city's smoke hangs weirdly above the valley at the tolling of the supper bill throws the passing forms of students in dark silhouette against the sky tall and black they move slowly by and see him in the sinister light to flit before the city like dim warning ghosts perhaps they are for this is Welles Institute and these black students have few dealings with the white city below and if you will notice night after night there is one dark form that ever hurries last and late a long straggling fellow he is brown and hard-haired who seems to be growing straight out of his clothes and walks with a half-apologetic roll he used perpetually to set the quiet dining room into waves of merriment as he stole to his place after the bell had tapped for prayers he seemed so perfectly awkward and yet one glance at his face made one forgive him much that broad, good-natured smile in which lay no bid of art or artifice but seemed just bubbling good nature and genuine satisfaction with the world he came to us from Altamaha a way down there beneath the gnarled oaks of southeastern Georgia where the sea croons to the sands and the sands listen until they sink half-drowned beneath the waters rising only here and there in long, low islands the white folk of Altamaha voted John a good boy fine plough-hand, good in the rice fields handy everywhere and always good-natured and respectful but they shook their heads when his mother wanted to send him off to school they heard him they said and they talked as though they knew but full half the black folk followed him proudly to the station and carried his queer little trunk and many bundles and there they shook and shook hands and the girls kissed him shyly and the boys clapped him on the back so the train came and he pinched his little sister lovingly and put his great arms about his mother's neck and then was away with a puff and a roar into the great yellow world that flamed and flared about the doubtful pilgrim on the coast they hurried past the squares and palmettos of Savannah through the cotton fields and through the weary night to Millville and came with the morning to the noise and bustle of Johnstown and they that stood behind that morning in Altamaha and watched the train as it noisily bore a playmate and brother and son away to the world had thereafter one ever-recurring word when John comes then what parties were to be and what new furniture in the front room perhaps even a new front room and there would be a new schoolhouse with John as teacher and then perhaps a big wedding all this and more when John comes but the white people shook their heads at first he was coming at Christmas time but the vacation proved too short and then the next summer but times were hard and schooling costly and so instead he worked in Johnstown and so it drifted to the next summer and the next till playmates scattered and mother grew gray and sister went up to the judges kitchen to work and still the legend lingered when John comes up at the judges they rather like this refrain for they too had a John a fair-haired smooth-faced boy who had played many a long summer's day to its close with his darker namesake yes sir John is at Princeton sir said the broad-shouldered gray-haired judge every morning as he marched down to the post office showing the Yankees what a southern gentleman can do he added and strode home again with his letters and his papers up at the great pillard house they lingered long over the Princeton letter the judge and his frail wife his sister and growing daughters it'll make a man of him college is the place and then he asked the shy little waitress well Jenny how's your John and added reflectively too bad too bad your mother sent him off it'll spoil him and the waitress wondered thus in the far away southern village the world lay waiting half-consciously the coming of two young men and dreamed in an inarticulate way of things that would be done and new thoughts that all would think singular that few thought of two Johns for the black folk thought of one John and he was black and the white folk thought of another John and he was white and neither world thought the other worlds thought save with a vague unrest up in Johnstown at the institute we were long puzzled at the case of John Jones for a long time the clay seemed unfit for any sort of molding he was loud and boisterous always laughing and singing and never able to work consecutively at anything he did not know how to study he had no idea of thoroughness and with his tardiness, carelessness and appalling good humor we were sore perplexed one night we sat in faculty meeting worried and serious for Jones was in trouble again this last escapade was too much and so we solemnly voted that Jones on account of repeated disorder and inattention to work be suspended for the rest of the term it seemed to us that the first time the serious thing was when the Dean told him he must leave school he stared at the grey-haired man blankly with great eyes why? why? he faltered but I haven't graduated then the Dean slowly and clearly explained reminding him of the tardiness and the carelessness of the poor lessons and neglected work of the noise and disorder until the fellow hung his head in confusion then he said quickly will you tell Mammy and sister you won't write Mammy now will you for if you won't I'll go out into the city and work and come back next term and show you something so the Dean promised faithfully and Jones shouldered his little trunk giving neither word nor look to the giggling boys and walked down Carlisle Street to the great city with sober eyes and a set and serious face perhaps we imagined it but some way it seemed to us that the serious look that crept over never left it again when he came back to us he went to work with all his rugged strength it was a hard struggle for things did not come easily to him few crowding memories of early life and teaching came to help him on his new way but all the world toward which he strove was of his own building and he builded slow and hard as the light dawned lingeringly on his new creations he sat wrapped and silent before the vision or wandered alone over the green campus appearing through and beyond the world of men into a world of thought and the thoughts at times puzzled him sorely he could not see just why the circle was not square and carried it out 56 decimal places one midnight would have gone further indeed had not the matron wrapped for lights out he caught terrible colds lying on his back in the meadows of nights trying to think out the solar system he had grave doubts as to the ethics of the fall of Rome and strongly suspected the Germans for being thieves and rascals despite his textbooks he pondered long over every new Greek word and wondered why this meant that and why it couldn't mean something else and how it must have felt to think all things in Greek so he thought and puzzled along for himself pausing perplexed where others skipped merrily and walking steadily through the difficulties where the rest stopped and surrendered thus he grew in body and soul and with him his clothes seemed to grow and arrange themselves coat sleeves got longer cuffs appeared and collars got less soiled now and then his boots shone and a new dignity crept into his walk and we who saw daily a new thoughtfulness growing in his eyes began to expect something of this plotting boy thus he passed out of the preparatory school into college and we who watched him felt four more years of change which almost transformed the tall grave man to us commencement morning he had left his queer thought world and come back to a world of motion and of men he looked now for the first time sharply about him and wondered he had seen so little before he grew slowly to feel almost for the first time the veil that lay between him and the white world he first noticed now the oppression that had not seemed oppression before differences that erstwhile seemed natural restraints and slights that in his boyhood days had gone unnoticed or been greeted with a laugh he felt angry now when men did not call him mister he clenched his hands at the Jim Crow cars and chaped at the color line that hemmed in him and his a tinge of sarcasm crept into his speech and a vague bitterness into his life and he sat long hours wondering and planning a way around these crooked things daily he found himself shrinking from the choked and narrow life of his native town and yet he always planned to go back to Altamaha he always planned to work there still more and more as the day approached he hesitated with a nameless dread and even the day after graduation he seized with eagerness the offer of the dean to send him north with a quartet during the summer vacation to sing for the institute a breath of air before the plunge he said to himself in half apology it was a bright September afternoon and the streets of New York were brilliant with moving men they reminded John of the sea as he sat in the square and watched them so changelessly changing so bright and dark so grave and gay he scanned their rich and faultless clothes the way they carried their hands the shape of their hats he peered into the hurrying carriages then leaning back with a sigh he said this is the world the notion suddenly seized him to see where the world was going since many of the richer and brighter seemed hurrying all one way so when a tall light-haired young man and a little talkative lady came by heroes half hesitatingly and followed them up the street they went past stores and gay shops across a broad square until with a hundred others they entered the high portal of a great building he was pushed toward the ticket office with the others and felt in his pocket for the new five dollar bill he had hoarded there seemed really no time for hesitation so he drew it bravely out passed it to the busy clerk and received simply a ticket but no change when at last he realized that he had paid five dollars to enter he knew not what he stood stock still amazed be careful said a little voice behind him you must not lynch the colored gentleman simply because he's in your way and a girl looked up roguishly into the eyes of her hair escort a shade of annoyance passed over the escort's face you will not understand us at the south he said half impatiently as if continuing with an argument with all your professions one never sees in the north so cordial and intimate relations between white and black as our everyday occurrences with us while I remember my closest playfellow in boyhood was a little negro named after me and sure they know too well the man stopped short and flushed to the roots of his hair for there directly beside his reserved orchestra chairs sat the negro he had stumbled over in the hallway he hesitated and grew pale with anger called the usher and gave him his card with a few peremptory words and slowly sat down the lady deftly changed the subject all this John did not see for he sat in a half days minding the scene about him the delicate beauty of the hall the faint perfume the moving myriad of men the rich clothing and low hum of talking seemed all a part of a world so different from his so strangely more beautiful than anything he had known that he sat in dreamland and started when after a hush rose high and clear the music of low and green swan the infinite beauty of the whale lingered and swept through every muscle of his frame and put it all atone he closed his eyes and grasped the elbows of the chair touching unwittingly the lady's arm and the lady drew away a deep longing swelled in all his heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that low life that held him prisoned and befell if he could only live up in the free air where the birds sang and the setting suns had no touch of blood who had called him to be the slave and bud of all and if he had called what right had he to call when a world like this lay open before men then the movement changed a fuller mightier harmony swelled away he looked thoughtfully across the hall and wondered why the beautiful grey-haired woman looked so listless and what the little man could be whispering about he would not be listless and idle he thought for he felt with the music the movement of power within him if he but had some master work some life service hard, I bitter hard but without the cringing and sickening servility without the cruel hurt that hardened his heart and soul when at last a soft sorrow swept across the violins there came to him the vision of a far off home the great eyes of his sister and the dark drawn face of his mother and his heart sank below the waters even as the sea-sand sinks by the shores of Altamaha only to be lifted aloft again with that last ethereal wail of the swan but quivered and faded away into the sky it left John sitting so silent and wrapped that he did not for some time notice the usher tapping him lightly on the shoulder and saying politely will you step this way please sir a little surprised he arose quickly at the last tap and turning to leave his seat looked full into the face of the fair-haired young man for the first time the young man recognized his dark boyhood playmate and John knew that it was the judge's son the white John started with his hand and then froze into his chair the black John smiled lightly then grimly and followed the usher down the aisle the manager was sorry very very sorry but he explained that some mistake had been made and selling the gentleman a seat he would refund the money of course and indeed felt the matter keenly and so forth and before he had finished John was gone walking hurriedly across the square and down the broad streets and as he passed the park he buttoned his coat and said John Jones you're a natural born fool then he went to his lodgings and wrote a letter and tore it up he wrote another and threw it in the fire with a scrap of paper and wrote dear mother and sister I am coming John perhaps said John as he settled himself on the train perhaps I am to blame myself in struggling against my manifest destiny simply because it looks hard and unpleasant here is my duty to Altamaha plain before me perhaps they'll let me settle the Negro problems there perhaps they won't I will go into the king which is not according to the law and then he mused and dreamed and planned a life work and the train flew south down in Altamaha after seven long years all the world knew John was coming the homes were scrubbed and scoured above all one the gardens and yards had an unwanted trimness and Jenny bought a new gingham with some finesse and negotiation all the dark Methodists and Presbyterians were induced to join in a monster welcome at the Baptist church warm discussions arose on every corner as to the exact extent and nature of John's accomplishments it was known tied on a grey and cloudy day when he came the black town flocked to the depot with a little of the white at the edges a happy throng with good mornings and howdy and laughing and joking and jostling mothers sat yonder in the window watching but sister Jenny stood on the platform nervously fingering her dress tall and lithe with soft brown skin and loving eyes peering from out a tangled wilderness of hair John rose gloomily as the train stopped for he was thinking of the Jim Crow car he stepped to the platform and paused a little dingy station a black crowd gaudy and dirty a half mile of dilapidated shanties along a straggling ditch of mud a shortedness and narrowness of it all seized him he looked in vain for his mother kissed coldly the tall strange girl who called him brother spoke a short dry word here and there then lingering neither for handshaking nor gossip started silently at the street raising his hat merely to the last eager old auntie to her open mouthed astonishment the people were distinctly bewildered this silent cold man was this John where was his smile and hearty hand grasp peered kind of down in the mouth so the Methodist preacher thoughtfully seems monster stuck up complained of Baptist's sister but the white postmaster from the edge of the crowd expressed the opinion of his folks plainly that damn nigger said he as he shouldered the mail and arranged his tobacco has gone north and got plumb full of full notions but they won't work in Automaha and the crowd melted away the meeting of welcome at the Baptist church was a failure Reyn spoiled the barbecue and thunder turned the milk in the ice cream when the speaking came at night the house was crowded to overflowing the three preachers had especially prepared themselves but somehow John's manner seemed to throw a blanket over everything he seemed so cold and preoccupied and had so strange an era of restraint that the Methodist brother could not warm up to his theme and elicited not a single amen the Presbyterian prayer was what Fevely responded to and even the Baptist preacher though he awakened faint enthusiasm got so mixed up in his favorite sentence that he had to close by stopping fully fifteen minutes sooner than he meant the people moved uneasily in their seats as John rose to reply he spoke slowly and methodically the age, he said demanded new ideas we were far different from those men of the 17th and 18th centuries with broader ideas of human brotherhood and destiny then he spoke of the rise of charity and popular education and particularly the spread of wealth and work the question was then he added reflectively looking at the low discolored ceiling what part the Negroes of this land would take in the striving of the new century he sketched in vague outline the new industrial school that might rise among these pines he spoke in detail of the charitable and philanthropic work that might be organized of money that might be saved for banks and business finally he urged unity and deprecated especially religious and denominational bickering today, he said with a smile the world cares little whether a man be Baptist or Methodist or indeed a churchman at all so long as he is good and true what difference does it make whether a man be baptized in river or not at all let's leave all that littleness and look higher then thinking of nothing else he slowly sat down the painful hush seized that crowded mass little had they understood of what he said for he spoke an unknown tongue saved the last word about baptism that they knew and they sat very still while the clock ticked then at last a low suppressed snarl came from the amen corner and an old bent man arose walked over the seats and climbed straight up into the pulpit he was wrinkled in black with scant gray and tufted hair his voice and hands shook as with palsy but on his face lay the intense wrapped look of the religious fanatic he seized the Bible with his rough huge hands twice he raised it in articulate and then fairly burst into words with rude and awful eloquence he quivered swayed and bent then rose a loft and perfect majesty till the people moaned and wept wailed and shouted and a wild shrieking arose from the corners where all the pent up feeling of the hour gathered itself and rushed into the air John never knew clearly what the old man said he only felt himself held up to scorn and scathing denunciation for trampling on the true religion and he realized with amazement that all unknowingly turned on something this little world held sacred he arose silently and passed out into the night down toward the sea he went in the fitful starlight half conscious of the girl who followed timidly after him when at last he stood upon the bluff he turned to his little sister and looked upon her sorrowfully remembering with sudden pain how little thought he had given her he put his arm about her and let her passion of tears long they stood together peering over the gray unresting water John she said does it make everyone unhappy when they study and learn lots of things he paused and smiled I am afraid it does he said and John are you glad you studied yes came the answer slowly but positively she watched the flickering lights upon the sea and said thoughtfully I wish I was unhappy and and putting both arms about his neck I think I am a little John it was several days later that John walked up to the judge's house to ask for the privilege of teaching the negro school the judge himself met him at the front door stared a little hard at him go round to the kitchen door John and wait sitting on the kitchen steps John stared at the corn early perplexed what on earth had come over him every step he may defended someone he had come to save his people and before he left the depot he had hurt them he sought to teach them at the church and had outraged their deepest feelings he had schooled himself to be respectful to the judge and then blundered into his front door and all the time he had meant right and yet and yet somehow he found it so hard and strange to fit his old surroundings again to find his place in the world about him he could not remember that he used to have any difficulty in the past when life was glad and gay the world seemed smooth and easy then perhaps but his sister came to the kitchen door just then and said the judge awaited him and sat in the dining room amid his morning's mail and he did not ask John to sit down he plunged squarely into the business you've come for the school I suppose well John I want to speak to you plainly you know I'm a friend to your people I've helped you and your family and would have done more if you hadn't got the notion of going off now I like the colored people and sympathize with all their reasonable aspirations but you and I both know John that in this country he's subordinate and can never expect to be the equal of white men in that place your people can be honest and respectful and God knows I'll do what I can to help them but when they want to reverse nature and rule white men and marry white women and sit in my parlor then by God we'll hold them under if we have to lynch every nigger in the land now John the question is are you with your education and northern notions going to accept the situation in your pockets to be faithful servants and labors as your fathers were I knew your father John he belonged to my brother and he was a good nigger well are you going to be like him or are you going to try to put full ideas of rising and equality into these folks head and make them discontented and unhappy I am going to accept the situation Judge Henderson answered John with a brevity that did not escape the keen old man very well we'll try you a while good morning it was a full month after the opening of the negro school that the other John came home tall, gay and headstrong the mother wept the sisters sang the whole white town was glad a proud man was the judge and it was a goodly sight to see the two swinging down main street together and yet all did not go smoothly between them the young man jumped for the little town and plainly had his heart set on New York now the one cherished ambition of the judge was to see his son mayor of Altamaha representative to the legislature and who could say the governor of Georgia so the argument often waxed hot between them good heavens father the younger man would say after dinner as he lighted a cigar and stood by the fireplace you surely don't expect a young Velodok to have gone prominently in this his god forsaken town with nothing but mud and negroes I did the judge would answer iconically and on this particular day it seemed from the gathering skull that he was about to add something more emphatic but neighbors had already begun to drop in to admire his son and the conversation drifted he had that John is livening things up at the darky school volunteered the postmaster after a pause what now? oh nothing in particular just his almighty air and upish ways believe I did hear something about his giving talks on the French Revolution equality and such like he's what I call a dangerous nigger have you heard him say anything out of the way? well I know but Sally, our girl told my wife a lot of rot then too I don't need to hear a nigger what won't say sir to a white man or who is this John interrupted the son white little black John Peggy's son your old playfellow the young man's face flushed angrily and then he laughed oh said he is the darky that tried to force himself into a seat beside the lady I was escorting but Judge Henderson waited to hear no more he had been netled all day and now at this he rose with a half smothered oath took his hat and cane and walked straight to the school house for John it had been a long hard pull to get things started in the rickety old shanty that sheltered his school the negroes were rent into factions foreign against him the parents were careless the children irregular and dirty and books, pencils and slates largely missing nevertheless he struggled hopefully on and seemed to see at last some glimmering of dawn the attendance was larger and the children were a shade cleaner this week even the booby class in reading showed a little comforting progress so John settled himself with renewed patience this afternoon now Mandy he said cheerfully that's better but you mustn't chop your words up so if the man goes why your little brother even wouldn't tell a story that way now would he now sir he can't talk alright now let's try again if the man, John the whole school started in surprise and the teacher half arose as the red angry face of the judge appeared in the open doorway John this school is closed you children can go home and get to work the white people of Old Tomahaw are not spending their money on black folks to have their heads crammed with impudence and lies clear out I locked the door myself up at the great pillard house the tall young son wandered aimlessly about after his father's abrupt departure he noticed him the books were old and stale the local newspaper flat and the women had retired with headaches and sewing he tried a nap but it was too warm so he sauntered out into the fields complaining disconsolently good lord how long will this imprisonment last he was not a bad fellow just a little spoiled and self indulgent and as headstrong as his proud father it was a pleasant to look upon as he sat on the great black stump at the edge of the pines idly swinging his legs and smoking while there isn't even a girl worth getting up a respectable flirtation with he growled just then his eye caught a tall littley figure hurrying toward him on the narrow path he looked with interest at first and burst into a laugh as he said well I declare if it isn't Jenny the little brown kitchen maid what a trim little body she is hello Jenny why haven't you kissed me since I came home he said gaily the young girl stared at him in surprise and confusion faltered something inarticulate and attempted to pass but a willful mood had seized the young idler and he caught her arm frightened she slipped by and half mischievously he turned and ran after her through the tall pines yonder toward the sea and he began slowly with his head down he had turned weirdly homeward from the school house then thinking to shield his mother from the blow started to meet his sister as she came home from work and break the news of his dismissal to her I'll go away he said slowly I'll go away and find work and send for them I cannot live here longer and then the fierce buried anger surged up into his throat he waved his arms out the path the great brown sea lay silent the air scarce breathed the dying day bathed the twisted oaks and mighty pines in black and gold and there came from the winds no warning not a whisper from the cloudless sky there was only a black man hurrying on with an ache in his heart seeing neither sun nor sea but starting as from a dream at the frightened cry that woke the pines to see his dark sister struggling in the arms of a tall and fair-haired man he said not a word but seizing a fallen limb struck him with all the pent-up hatred of his great black arm and the body lay white and still beneath the pines all bathed in sunshine and in blood John looked at it dreamily then walked back to the house briskly and said in a soft voice Mammy I'm going away free she gazed at him dimly and faltered No, honey, you're going north again? he looked out where the North Star glistened pale above the waters and said Yes, Mammy, I'm going No then without another word he went out into the narrow lane up by the straight pines to the same winding path and seated himself on the great stump looking at the blood where the body had lain yonder in the gray past he had played with that dead boy romping together under the solemn trees the night deepened he thought of the boys at Johnstown he wondered how Brown had turned out and Carrie and Jones why he was Jones and he wondered what they would all say when they knew in that great long dining room with its hundreds of merry eyes then as the sheen of the starlight stole over him he thought of the gilded ceiling of that vast concert hall heard stealing toward him the faint sweet music of the swan Hark, was it music or the hurry and shouting of men Yes, surely clear and high the faint sweet melody rose and fluttered like a living thing so that the very earth trembled as with the tramp of horses and the murmur of angry men he leaned back and smiled toward the sea once rose the strange melody away from the dark shadows where lay the noise of horses galloping on with an effort he roused himself bent forward and looked steadily down the pathway softly humming the song of the bride Freudie Giffelt Die amid the trees in the dim morning twilight he watched their shadows dancing and heard their horses thundering toward him until at last they came sweeping like a storm and he saw in front that haggard white haired man whose eyes flashed red with fury oh how he pitied him twirling twisted rope then as the storm burst around him he rose slowly to his feet and turned his closed eyes toward the sea and the world whistled in his ears End of chapter 13