Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 252 pages of information about Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures.

Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 252 pages of information about Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures.

There is a vast difference between social rights and civil rights.  Near Lexington, Ky., where I claim my home, is the country residence of J.B.  Haggin, the multi-millionaire horseman.  Soon after the completion of his mansion home, he gave a reception which cost thousands of dollars.  The “first cut” of society came from far and near, but I was not invited, nor did I feel slighted, for I had no claim upon the millionaire magnate socially.  But when I meet the great turf-king on the turnpike, he in his limozine and I in my little runabout, I say, “Mr. Haggin, give me half the road, sir.”  Inside his gates I have no claim, but outside, the turnpike’s free, and J.B.  Haggin can’t run over me.  So the negro has no claim on the white man for social equality, but he has a right to the key of knowledge and a chance in the world.

Slavery was not an unmixed evil.  Like the famed shield it had two sides.  While it had its blighting effects it had its blessings.  In bondage the negro was taught to speak the English language, and in childhood had the association of white children with their southern home training.  They were taught two valuable lessons, industry and obedience, without which liberty means license.  The negro was compelled to work and obey, two lessons the Indian never had and never respected.  Beside these valuable lessons the negro was taught the fundamental principles of Christianity and at the opening of the war nearly every negro belonged to some church.  Their preachers used to get their dictionary and Bible very amusingly mixed at times.  Elder Barton exhorting his hearers said:  “Paul may plant and Apolinarus water, but if you keeps on tradin’ off your birthright for a pot of Messapotamia you’se gwine to git lost.  You may go down into de water and come up out ob de water like dat Ethiopian Unitarium, but if you keeps on ossifyin’ from one saloon to another; if you keeps on breakin’ the ten commandments to satisfy your appetite for chicken; if you keeps on spendin’ your time playing craps, the fourteenth amendment ain’t gwine to save you.  Seben come elebin never took a man to Heben.  I want you to understand dat.”  Yet from such crudeness of expression has come preaching, remarkable for thought as well as scholarship and eloquence, while out of the suffering of slavery, through the law of compensation, we have matchless melodies in negro choirs and negro concert companies.

Leaders of thought may differ as to the methods of solution, but upon one thing all must agree.  The net-work of our republic is such that if one suffers all suffer, and the negro is so interwoven with the various interests of our National life, we must level the race up or it will level the white race down.  The lower classes must be lifted to the tableland of a better life, where they can breathe the pure air of intelligence and morality, or they will pollute the whole body politic.  They must also acquire property.  Economy is a lesson the negro race needs to learn.  This lesson was well presented to a drunken white man by a sober old negro.  The white man spent his money for liquor, and then started for home.  Reaching a river he must cross by ferry, he found he had spent his last penny for drink.  Seeing an old colored man seated at a cabin door near by, he turned toward the cabin.  Nearing the old man he said: 

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.