ught their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled
our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded
with a headstrong, careless people to despise not Justice, Mercy, and
Truth, lest the nation be smitten with a curse. Our song, our toil,
our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in
blood-brotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this
work and striving? Would America have been America without her Negro
people?

Even so is the hope that sang in the songs of my fathers well sung. If
somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good,
pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend
the Veil and the prisoned shall go free. Free, free as the sunshine
trickling down the morning into these high windows of mine, free as
yonder fresh young voices welling up to me from the caverns of brick
and mortar below--swelling with song, instinct with life, tremulous
treble and darkening bass. My children, my little children, are
singing to the sunshine, and thus they sing:

Let us cheer the wea-ry trav-el-ler,
Cheer the wea-ry trav-el-ler, Let us
cheer the wea-ry trav-el-ler
A-long the heav-en-ly way.

And the traveller girds himself, and sets his face toward the Morning,
and goes his way.

The Afterthought

Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not
still-born into the world wilderness. Let there spring, Gentle One,
from out its leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful deed to reap the
harvest wonderful. Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth,
and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations,
in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare. Thus
in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and
these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Souls of Black Folk, by W. E. B. Du Bois

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