with its lofty pillars and
its white pigeons fluttering down through the golden air. I see women
with strained and anxious faces, and children alert yet helpless. I see
night come down with its dangers and its apprehensions, and in a big
homely room I feel on my tired head the touch of loving hands--now worn
and wrinkled, but fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and
stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man--as they lay a
mother's blessing there, while at her knees--the truest altar I yet have
found--I thank God that she is safe in her sanctuary, because her
slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin, or guard at her chamber door, put
a black man's loyalty between her and danger.

I catch another vision. The crisis of battle--a soldier, struck,
staggering, fallen. I see a slave, scuffing through the smoke, winding
his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of hurtling
death--bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the
stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that he would lay down
his life in his master's stead. I see him by the weary bedside,
ministering with uncomplaining patience, praying with all his humble
heart that God will lift his master up, until death comes in mercy and
in honor to still the soldier's agony and seal the soldier's life. I see
him by the open grave--mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for the
death of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see him, when the
mold is heaped and the great drama of his life is closed, turn away and
with downcast eyes and uncertain step start out into new and strange
fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until his shambling figure
is lost in the light of this better and brighter day. And from the grave
comes a voice, saying, "Follow him! put your arms about him in his need,
even as he put his about me. Be his friend as he was mine." And out into
this new world--strange to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering both--I
follow! And may God forget my people--when they forget these!

Whatever the future may hold for them, whether they plod along in the
servitude from which they have never been lifted since the Cyrenian was
laid hold upon by the Roman soldiers, and made to bear the cross of the
fainting Christ--whether they find homes again in Africa, and thus
hasten the prophecy of the psalmist, who said, "And suddenly Ethiopia
shall hold out her hands unto God"--whether forever dislocated and
separate, they