ity. The deficiency, compared with the
standards of wealthier States, results in a widespread ignorance
detrimental not only to the community but to the nation. The interests
at stake are common to us all. The backlying cause of the
trouble,--slavery and its accompaniments--was in a sense our common
responsibility; we all ought to have united to get rid of it peaceably,
and the North ought to have paid its share. For the dereliction the
South has paid a terrible price. The North, too, suffered wofully, yet
in far less measure. Would it not be the part of patriotism and
statesmanship--of wisdom and good-will--that all should now take some
share in lifting the load which weighs heaviest on the South, but hurts
us all?

We are spending a hundred millions a year for a navy. Would not some of
that money be put to better use in training our own citizens, who will
otherwise go untaught? Someone has said: "The cost of one battleship
would endow the higher education of the Southern negro for half a
century to come."

It is not the negro only, it is his white neighbor also, for whom we are
to provide. So to plan the provision that the money be honestly and
wisely spent; to do it with just consideration of local feeling, yet on
firm lines of American democracy--this would take study and sagacity.
But could study and sagacity be better applied than to make this idea
practical? The project seems prompted by wise self-interest and by
justice. The South is carrying more than its share of national expense,
and without complaint. Our tariff system presses far heavier on the
agricultural South than on the manufacturing North. Of our payment of
pensions,--running up to $130,000,000 a year,--the South bears its
proportion, though it is paid to men for fighting against her, and the
South makes no remonstrance. Is it not simple justice, is it not a
matter of national conscience and honor, that the whole nation should
help her in educating the future citizens of the republic?

From this national aspect, we return to the more personal phases of our
theme. Shall we touch on that subject whose very name seems to prohibit
discussion?--what is called "social equality," or as others would prefer
"social intimacy." Either phrase seems to evoke a phantom before which
consideration and composure flee. But we may, as Epictetus suggests,
say, "Appearances, wait for me a little; let me see who you are and what
you are about, and put you to the test."