on to the book written for the express purpose of thoroughly
discrediting the Negro race in America. The militant look that came into
Ensal's eye pleased Mr. Hostility immensely. "I will get him! I will get
him!" thought he.

Ensal did not speak for some time, allowing his weary mind to go forth
upon excursions of thought begotten by the mention of the book. The
movement for which this book stood, constituted what Ensal regarded as
one of the most menacing phases of the problem of the relation of the
races. He knew that in the very nature of things a policy of
misrepresentation was the necessary concomitant of a policy of
repression. Now that the repressionists were invading the realm of
literature to ply their trade, he saw how that the Negro was to be
attacked in the quiet of the AMERICAN HOME, the final arbiter of so many
of earth's most momentous questions, and he trembled at the havoc vile
misrepresentations would play before the truth could get a hearing.

Ensal thought of the odds against the Negro in this literary battle: how
that Southern white people, being more extensive purchasers of books
than the Negroes, would have the natural bias of great publishing
agencies on their side; how that Northern white people, resident in the
South, for social and business reasons, might hesitate to father books
not in keeping with the prevailing sentiment of Southern white people;
how that residents of the North, who essayed to write in defense of the
Negro, were laughed out of school as mere theorists ignorant of actual
conditions; and, finally, how that a lack of leisure and the absence of
general culture handicapped the Negro in fighting his own battle in this
species of warfare.

At last Ensal discussed the book with such warmth that Mr. Hostility
greatly rejoiced. Leaning across the table, his fiery eyes glowing more
fiercely than ever, he almost shrieked:

"Friend, aside from that book, knowest thou not unto what the content of
the Southern policy is leading? Extinction, sir, extinction! Listen to
me awhile."

"One could hardly be more absorbed than I am at this moment," said
Ensal, rather glad of the warmth of the discussion that took his mind
somewhat away from his personal grief.

"The Southern white man, when it comes to you, is a believer in caste.
He believes or professes to believe that God, who created the worm and
the bird, also created the Negro and the white man, and that the gulf
between these respec