rinted law, there has
been going on for a generation as deep a storm and stress of human
souls, as intense a ferment of feeling, as intricate a writhing of
spirit, as ever a people experienced. Within and without the sombre
veil of color vast social forces have been at work,--efforts for human
betterment, movements toward disintegration and despair, tragedies and
comedies in social and economic life, and a swaying and lifting and
sinking of human hearts which have made this land a land of mingled
sorrow and joy, of change and excitement and unrest.

The centre of this spiritual turmoil has ever been the millions of
black freedmen and their sons, whose destiny is so fatefully bound up
with that of the nation. And yet the casual observer visiting the
South sees at first little of this. He notes the growing frequency of
dark faces as he rides along,--but otherwise the days slip lazily on,
the sun shines, and this little world seems as happy and contented as
other worlds he has visited. Indeed, on the question of questions--the
Negro problem--he hears so little that there almost seems to be a
conspiracy of silence; the morning papers seldom mention it, and then
usually in a far-fetched academic way, and indeed almost every one
seems to forget and ignore the darker half of the land, until the
astonished visitor is inclined to ask if after all there IS any problem
here. But if he lingers long enough there comes the awakening: perhaps
in a sudden whirl of passion which leaves him gasping at its bitter
intensity; more likely in a gradually dawning sense of things he had
not at first noticed. Slowly but surely his eyes begin to catch the
shadows of the color-line: here he meets crowds of Negroes and whites;
then he is suddenly aware that he cannot discover a single dark face;
or again at the close of a day's wandering he may find himself in some
strange assembly, where all faces are tinged brown or black, and where
he has the vague, uncomfortable feeling of the stranger. He realizes
at last that silently, resistlessly, the world about flows by him in
two great streams: they ripple on in the same sunshine, they approach
and mingle their waters in seeming carelessness,--then they divide and
flow wide apart. It is done quietly; no mistakes are made, or if one
occurs, the swift arm of the law and of public opinion swings down for
a moment, as when the other day a black man and a white woman were
arrested for talking together