more or
less corruptly; our religion--which they practise certainly no better
than we; and our blood--which our laws make a badge of disgrace.
Perhaps we could not do them strict justice, without a great sacrifice
upon our own part. But they are men, and they should have their
chance--at least _some_ chance."

"I shall pray for your success," sighed the preacher. "With God all
things are possible, if He will them. But I can only anticipate your
failure."

"The colonel is growing so popular, with his ready money and his
cheerful optimism," said old General Thornton, another of the guests,
"that we'll have to run him for Congress, as soon as he is reconverted
to the faith of his fathers."

Colonel French had more than once smiled at the assumption that a mere
change of residence would alter his matured political convictions. His
friends seemed to look upon them, so far as they differed from their
own, as a mere veneer, which would scale off in time, as had the
multiplied coats of whitewash over the pencil drawing made on the
school-house wall in his callow youth.

"You see," the old general went on, "it's a social matter down here,
rather than a political one. With this ignorant black flood sweeping
up against us, the race question assumes an importance which
overshadows the tariff and the currency and everything else. For
instance, I had fully made up my mind to vote the other ticket in the
last election. I didn't like our candidate nor our platform. There was
a clean-cut issue between sound money and financial repudiation, and
_I_ was tired of the domination of populists and demagogues. All my
better instincts led me toward a change of attitude, and I boldly
proclaimed the fact. I declared my political and intellectual
independence, at the cost of many friends; even my own son-in-law
scarcely spoke to me for a month. When I went to the polls, old Sam
Brown, the triflingest nigger in town, whom I had seen sentenced to
jail more than once for stealing--old Sam Brown was next to me in the
line.

"'Well, Gin'l,' he said, 'I'm glad you is got on de right side at
las', an' is gwine to vote _our_ ticket.'"

"This was too much! I could stand the other party in the abstract, but
not in the concrete. I voted the ticket of my neighbours and my
friends. We had to preserve our institutions, if our finances went to
smash. Call it prejudice--call it what you like--it's human nature,
and you'll come to it, colonel, you'll come