t have wrought upon her mind. She has lucid moments, but
whenever her mind forcibly recurs to the Southern situation she again
plunges into the gulf of despair. If in these lucid moments you could
place before her a ladder of hope, I am of the opinion that a cure would
be effected. That is equivalent to saying, I fear, that the case is
incurable, for I can see no way out of the Southern tangle."

Such were the awful words addressed to Earl Bluefield by the physician
in charge of the sanitarium when Earl called to learn of him his opinion
concerning Eunice's case.

Earl walked forth from the sanitarium and journeyed hurriedly to the
southern border of the city. When the houses of the city were well at
his back and he had an unobstructed view to the south, he paused and,
holding his right hand aloft, he said:

"Hear, O spirit world, if such there be, that, in the days to come, you
may witness how faithfully Earl Bluefield, Humanity's Ishmaelite, kept
his word. Non-existent was I until the whim of a Southern white man,
trampling upon the alleged sacred canons of his race, called me into
being and endowed me with the spirit of his kind. In the race into which
I was thrust, I sought to manifest my martial spirit, but met with no
adequate response from men grooved in the ways of peace. I found me a
wife with spirit akin to mine, and like myself a victim of the bloods.
The two of us withdrew from the active affairs of men, and from our own
heath looked out upon the land of our birth, in the very which we had
been made aliens. And now we have been dragged from our happy seclusion
and gibbeted.

"And thinkest thou, O Southland, that the last has been heard of me? Ha!
Ha! For fear that thou mayest deceive thyself thus, hear the oath of
Earl the Ishmaelite:

"By the wrenched chords of the heart of a boy spurned by a contemning
father; by the double shame of a mother wickedly wooed and despised in
the one breath; by the patience and optimism of the blood of my black
forbears; by the energy and persistence of my grant of blood from
Europe--by all these mighty tokens, I make oath that this nation shall
rest neither day nor night until this shadow is lifted from my soul. And
I further make oath, O despisers of the offerings of my higher self,
that I shall meet your every fresh wound with face the more uplifted
because thereof, and to better meet all that you have to hand out to me,
I shall keep company with the Spirit that makes