the principles of mechanics, were all invented or discovered by darker and what we now call inferior races and nations.  We have carried many of these to their highest point of perfection, but the foundation was laid by others.  Do you know the only original contribution to civilization we can claim is what we have done in steam and electricity and in making implements of war more deadly?  And there we worked largely on principles which we did not discover.  Why, we didn’t even originate the religion we use.  We are a great race, the greatest in the world today, but we ought to remember that we are standing on a pile of past races, and enjoy our position with a little less show of arrogance.  We are simply having our turn at the game, and we were a long time getting to it.  After all, racial supremacy is merely a matter of dates in history.  The man here who belongs to what is, all in all, the greatest race the world ever produced, is almost ashamed to own it.  If the Anglo-Saxon is the source of everything good and great in the human race from the beginning, why wasn’t the German forest the birthplace of civilization, rather than the valley of the Nile?”

The Texan was somewhat disconcerted, for the argument had passed a little beyond his limits, but he swung it back to where he was sure of his ground by saying:  “All that may be true, but it hasn’t got much to do with us and the niggers here in the South.  We’ve got ’em here, and we’ve got ’em to live with, and it’s a question of white man or nigger, no middle ground.  You want us to treat niggers as equals.  Do you want to see ’em sitting around in our parlors?  Do you want to see a mulatto South?  To bring it right home to you, would you let your daughter marry a nigger?”

“No, I wouldn’t consent to my daughter’s marrying a nigger, but that doesn’t prevent my treating a black man fairly.  And I don’t see what fair treatment has to do with niggers sitting around in your parlors; they can’t come there unless they’re invited.  Out of all the white men I know, only a hundred or so have the privilege of sitting around in my parlor.  As to the mulatto South, if you Southerners have one boast that is stronger than another, it is your women; you put them on a pinnacle of purity and virtue and bow down in a chivalric worship before them; yet you talk and act as though, should you treat the Negro fairly and take the anti-inter-marriage laws off your statute books, these same women would rush into the arms of black lovers and husbands.  It’s a wonder to me that they don’t rise up and resent the insult.”

“Colonel,” said the Texan, as he reached into his handbag and brought out a large flask of whisky, “you might argue from now until hell freezes over, and you might convince me that you’re right, but you’ll never convince me that I’m wrong.  All you say sounds very good, but it’s got nothing to do with facts.  You can say what men ought to be, but they ain’t that; so there