ave me a
sword-thrust that day in school which was years in healing.

II

Since I have grown older I have often gone back and tried to analyze
the change that came into my life after that fateful day in school.
There did come a radical change, and, young as I was, I felt fully
conscious of it, though I did not fully comprehend it. Like my first
spanking, it is one of the few incidents in my life that I can
remember clearly. In the life of everyone there is a limited number of
unhappy experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped
there with a die; and in long years after, they can be called up
in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived
through anew; these are the tragedies of life. We may grow to include
some of them among the trivial incidents of childhood--a broken toy,
a promise made to us which was not kept, a harsh, heart-piercing
word--but these, too, as well as the bitter experiences and
disappointments of mature years, are the tragedies of life.

And so I have often lived through that hour, that day, that week, in
which was wrought the miracle of my transition from one world into
another; for I did indeed pass into another world. From that time I
looked out through other eyes, my thoughts were colored, my words
dictated, my actions limited by one dominating, all-pervading idea
which constantly increased in force and weight until I finally
realized in it a great, tangible fact.

And this is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence which operates
upon each and every colored man in the United States. He is forced to
take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen,
or a man, or even a human being, but from the viewpoint of a _colored_
man. It is wonderful to me that the race has progressed so broadly as
it has, since most of its thought and all of its activity must run
through the narrow neck of this one funnel.

And it is this, too, which makes the colored people of this country,
in reality, a mystery to the whites. It is a difficult thing for
a white man to learn what a colored man really thinks; because,
generally, with the latter an additional and different light must
be brought to bear on what he thinks; and his thoughts are often
influenced by considerations so delicate and subtle that it would be
impossible for him to confess or explain them to one of the opposite
race. This gives to every colored man, in proportion to his
intellect