rs which blanched the face of Christendom were but the bloody
harvest of fields sown by society, by cultured men and women, by speech,
and book, and press, by professions and politics, nay, by the pulpit
itself, and the men who there make God's truth a lie,--garbling or
denying the inspired declaration that "He has made of one blood all
people to dwell upon the face of the earth"; and that he, the All-Just
and Merciful One, "is no respecter of persons."

This riot, begun ostensibly to oppose the enforcement of a single law,
developed itself into a burning and pillaging assault upon the homes and
property of peaceful citizens. To realize this, it was only necessary to
walk the streets, if that were possible, through those days of riot and
conflagration, observe the materials gathered into the vast, moving
multitudes, and scrutinize the faces of those of whom they were
composed,--deformed, idiotic, drunken, imbecile, poverty-stricken;
seamed with every line which wretchedness could draw or vicious habits
and associations delve. To walk these streets and look upon these faces
was like a fearful witnessing in perspective of the last day, when the
secrets of life, more loathsome than those of death, shall be laid bare
in all their hideous deformity and ghastly shame.

The knowledge of these people and their deeds was sufficient to create a
paralysis of fear, even where they were not seen. Indeed, there was
terror everywhere. High and low, rich and poor, cultured and ignorant,
all shivered in its awful grasp. Upon stately avenues and noisome alleys
it fell with the like blackness of darkness. Women cried aloud to God
with the same agonized entreaty from knees bent on velvet carpets or
bare and dingy floors. Men wandered up and down, prisoners in their own
homes, and cursed or prayed with equal fury or intensity whether the
homes were simple or splendid. Here one surveyed all his costly store of
rare and exquisite surroundings, and shook his head as he gazed, ominous
and foreboding. There, another of darker hue peered out from garret
casement, or cellar light, or broken window-pane, and, shuddering,
watched some woman stoned and beaten till she died; some child shot
down, while thousands of heavy, brutal feet trod over it till the hard
stones were red with its blood, and the little prostrate form, yet warm,
lost every likeness of humanity, and lay there, a sickening mass of
mangled flesh and bones; some man assaulted, clubbed,