“Only waiting till the angels
      Open wide the mystic gate.”

The shadows have been lifted from all their lives; and peace, like bright dew, has descended upon their paths.  Blessed themselves, their lives are a blessing to others.

NOTE.

From threads of fact and fiction I have woven a story whose mission will not be in vain if it awaken in the hearts of our countrymen a stronger sense of justice and a more Christlike humanity in behalf of those whom the fortunes of war threw, homeless, ignorant and poor, upon the threshold of a new era.  Nor will it be in vain if it inspire the children of those upon whose brows God has poured the chrism of that new era to determine that they will embrace every opportunity, develop every faculty, and use every power God has given them to rise in the scale of character and condition, and to add their quota of good citizenship to the best welfare of the nation.  There are scattered among us materials for mournful tragedies and mirth-provoking comedies, which some hand may yet bring into the literature of the country, glowing with the fervor of the tropics and enriched by the luxuriance of the Orient, and thus add to the solution of our unsolved American problem.

The race has not had very long to straighten its hands from the hoe, to grasp the pen and wield it as a power for good, and to erect above the ruined auction-block and slave-pen institutions of learning, but

    There is light beyond the darkness,
          Joy beyond the present pain;
    There is hope in God’s great justice
          And the negro’s rising brain. 
    Though the morning seems to linger
          O’er the hill-tops far away,
    Yet the shadows bear the promise
          Of a brighter coming day.