. Fly, my maiden, fly, for
yonder comes Hippomenes!

VI

Of the Training of Black Men

Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Were't not a Shame--were't not a Shame for him
In this clay carcase crippled to abide?

OMAR KHAYYAM (FITZGERALD).

From the shimmering swirl of waters where many, many thoughts ago the
slave-ship first saw the square tower of Jamestown, have flowed down to
our day three streams of thinking: one swollen from the larger world
here and overseas, saying, the multiplying of human wants in
culture-lands calls for the world-wide cooperation of men in satisfying
them. Hence arises a new human unity, pulling the ends of earth
nearer, and all men, black, yellow, and white. The larger humanity
strives to feel in this contact of living Nations and sleeping hordes a
thrill of new life in the world, crying, "If the contact of Life and
Sleep be Death, shame on such Life." To be sure, behind this thought
lurks the afterthought of force and dominion,--the making of brown men
to delve when the temptation of beads and red calico cloys.

The second thought streaming from the death-ship and the curving river
is the thought of the older South,--the sincere and passionate belief
that somewhere between men and cattle, God created a tertium quid, and
called it a Negro,--a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable
within its limitations, but straitly foreordained to walk within the
Veil. To be sure, behind the thought lurks the afterthought,--some of
them with favoring chance might become men, but in sheer self-defence
we dare not let them, and we build about them walls so high, and hang
between them and the light a veil so thick, that they shall not even
think of breaking through.

And last of all there trickles down that third and darker thought,--the
thought of the things themselves, the confused, half-conscious mutter
of men who are black and whitened, crying "Liberty, Freedom,
Opportunity--vouchsafe to us, O boastful World, the chance of living
men!" To be sure, behind the thought lurks the afterthought,--suppose,
after all, the World is right and we are less than men? Suppose this
mad impulse within is all wrong, some mock mirage from the untrue?

So here we stand among thoughts of human unity, even through conquest
and slavery; the inferiority of black men, even if forced by fraud; a
shriek in the night for the freedom of men who