ge of Negro blood, the white
people cast off. We receive the cast off with open arms and he
comes to us with his devitalizing power. Thus, the white man
was slowly exterminating us and our total extinction was but
a short period of time distant. I looked out upon our strong,
tender hearted, manly race being swept from the face of the
earth by immorality, and the very marrow in my bones seemed
chilled at the thought thereof. I determined to spend my life
fighting the evil. My first step was to solemnly pledge God
to never marry a mulatto man. My next resolve was to part in
every honorable way all courting couples of mulatto people
that I could. My other and greatest task was to persuade the
evil women of my race to cease their criminal conduct with
white men and I went about pleading with them upon my knees to
desist. I pointed out that such a course was wrong before God
and was rapidly destroying the Negro race. I told them of my
resolve to never marry a mulatto man. Many had faith in me
and I was the means of redeeming numbers of these erring ones.
When you came, I loved you. I struggled hard against that
love. God, alone, knows how I battled against it. I prayed Him
to take it from me, as it was eating my heart away. Sometimes
I would appear indifferent to you with the hope of driving you
away, but then my love would come surging with all the more
violence and sweep me from my feet. At last, you seemed to
draw away from me and I was happy. I felt free to you. But you
at last proposed to me when I thought all such notions were
dead. At once I foresaw my tragic end. My heart shed bloody
tears, weeping over my own sad end, weeping for my beloved
parents, weeping for my noble Bernard who was so true, so
noble, so great in all things.

"Bernard, how happy would I have been, how deliriously happy,
could I but have stood beside you at the altar and sworn
fidelity to you. Ours would have been an ideal home. But it
was not to be. I had to choose between you and my race. Your
noble heart, in its sober moments will sanction my choice,
I would not have died if I could have lived without proving
false to my race. Had I lived, my love and your agony, which I
cannot bear, would have made me prove false to every vow.

"Dear Bernard, I have a favor to ask of you. Secure the
boo