, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy 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, considerately said
nothing, only sat tapping his foot impatiently. But Alexander Crummell
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 with
outstretched hands. Englishmen clasped them,--Wilberforce and Stanley,
Thirwell and Ingles, and even Froude and Macaulay; Sir Benjamin Brodie
bade him rest awhile at Queen's College in Cambridge, and there he
lingered, struggling for health of body and mind, until he took his
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 that is more than death,--the passing of a soul that has missed
its duty. Twenty years he wandered,--twenty 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 marvellous 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 sick