hatever, sir." "But what, may I
ask, have these operations cost beyond what you have received in the
way of school-fees?" I continued. "About 7,000 dollars," (1,500_l._)
said he. Including two or three branches, there are about 300 coloured
children thus educated. Mr. Gilmore was at first much opposed and
ridiculed; but that state of feeling was beginning to wear away.
Several of the children were so fair that, accustomed as I am to shades
of colour, I could not distinguish them from the Anglo-Saxon race; and
yet Mr. Gilmore told me even they would not have been admitted to the
other public schools! How discerning the Americans are! How proud of
their skin-deep aristocracy! And the author of "Cincinnati in 1841," in
speaking of those very schools from which these fair children were
excluded, says, "These schools are founded not merely on the principle
that all men are free and equal, but that all men's children are so
likewise; and that, as it is our duty to love our neighbour as
ourselves, it is our duty to provide the same benefits and blessings to
his children as to our own. These establishments result from the
recognition of the fact also, that we have all a common
interest--moral, political, and pecuniary--in the education of the
whole community." Those gloriously exclusive schools I had no wish to
visit. But I felt a peculiar pleasure in visiting this humbler yet
well-conducted institution, for the benefit of those who are despised
and degraded on account of their colour. As I entered, a music-master
was teaching them, with the aid of a piano, to sing some select pieces
for an approaching examination, both the instrument and the master
having been provided by the generous Gilmore. Even the music-master,
notwithstanding his first-rate ability, suffers considerable loss of
patronage on account of his services in this branded school. Among the
pieces sung, and sung exceedingly well, was the following touching
appeal, headed "The Fugitive Slave to the Christian"--Air,
"Cracovienne."
"The fetters galled my weary soul,--
A soul that seemed but thrown away:
I spurned the tyrant's base control,
Resolved at last the man to play:
The hounds are haying on my track;
O Christian! will you send me back?
"I felt the stripes,--the lash I saw,
Red dripping with a father's gore;
And, worst of all their lawless law,
The insults that my mother bore!
The hounds are baying on my track;
O Christian! will
|