t amid his labors that
the old Captain was making an attorney's plea rather than a candid
exposition. At this point in his thoughts there gradually limned itself
in the brown man's mind the answer to that enigma which he almost had
unraveled on the day he first saw Cissie Dildine pass his window. With
it came the answer to the puzzle contained in the old Captain's library.
The library was not an ordinary compilation of the world's thought; it,
too, was an attorney's special pleading against the equality of man. Any
book or theory that upheld the equality of man was carefully excluded
from the shelves. Darwin's great hypothesis, and every development
springing from it, had been banned, because the moment that a theory was
propounded of the great biologic relationship of all flesh, from worms
to vertebrates, there instantly followed a corollary of the brotherhood
of man.

What Christ did for theology, Darwin did for biology,--he democratized
it. The One descended to man's brotherhood from the Trinity; the other
climbed up to it from the worms.

The old Captain's library lacked sincerity. Southern orthodoxy, which
persists in pouring its religious thought into the outworn molds of
special creation, lacks sincerity. Scarcely a department of Southern
life escapes this fundamental attitude of special pleader and
disingenuousness. It explains the Southern fondness for legal
subtleties. All attempts at Southern poetry, belles-lettres, painting,
novels, bear the stamp of the special plea, of authors whose exposition
is careful.

Peter perceived what every one must perceive, that when letters turn
into a sort of glorified prospectus of a country, all value as
literature ceases. The very breath of art and interpretation is an eager
and sincere searching of the heart. This sincerity the South lacks. Her
single talent will always be forensic, because she is a lawyer with a
cause to defend. And such is the curse that arises from lynchings and
venery and extortions and dehumanizings,--sterility; a dumbness of soul.

Peter Siner's thoughts lifted him with the tremendous buoyancy of
inspiration. He swung out of his chair and began tramping his dark room.
The skin of his scalp tickled as if a ghost had risen before him. The
nerves in his thighs and back vibrated. He felt light, and tingled with
energy.

Unaware of what he was doing, he set about lighting the gasolene-lamp.
He worked with nervous quickness, as if he were in a great