n,
and far up among the dream-clouds, just as she is about to recognize
certain happy faces, there is a rush of sound, a flood of consternation,
a start, a tumbling in of consciousness, the five senses leap to their
stations, and she sits upright fluttering her fan and glancing round
upon the seated congregation. The pastor has said amen.

Garnet spoke extemporaneously. The majority, who did not know every line
of the sermon was written and memorized, marvelled at its facility, and
even some who knew admitted it was wonderful for fervor, rhetorical
richness and the skill with which it "voiced the times" without so much
as touching those matters which Dixie, Rosemont's Dixie, did not want
touched. Parson Tombs and others moaned "Amen," "Glory," "Thaynk Gawd,"
etc., after every great period. Only General Halliday said to his
daughter, "He's out of focus again; claiming an exclusive freedom for
his own set."

The text was, "But I was born free."

Paul, the speaker said, was as profound a believer in law as in faith.
Jealous for every right of his citizenship, he might humble himself, but
he never lightly allowed himself to be humbled. Law is essential to
every civil order, but the very laying of it upon a man makes it his
title-deed to a freedom without which obedience is not obedience, nor
citizenship citizenship. No man is entirely free to fill out the full
round of his whole manhood who is not in some genuine, generous way an
author of the laws he obeys. "At this sacred desk and on this holy day I
thank God that Dixie's noble sons and daughters are at last, after great
tribulations, freer from laws and government not of their own choice
than ever before since war furled its torn and blood-drenched banner! We
have taught the world--and it's worth the tribulation to have taught the
world--under God, that a people born with freedom in the blood cannot be
forced even to do right! 'What you order me to do, alien lawmaker, may
be right, but I was born free!' My first duty to God is to be free, and
no freedom is freedom till it is purged of all indignity!

"But mark the limitation! Freemen are not made in a day! It was to a man
who had bought his freedom that Paul boasted a sort that could not be
bought! God's word for it, it takes at least two generations to make
true freemen; fathers to buy the freedom and sons and daughters to be
born into it! Wherefore let every one to whom race and inheritance have
given beauty or tal