y the
struggle is doubtful if not decided in favor of the black. "Here we go,
up--up--uppy! Here we go, down--down--downy!" the children used to sing
when playing see-saw with a broad plank on the fence; and _they_
understood, what their elders sometimes forget--that the rebound of
extreme height is descent. One more illustration, before this train of
thought necessarily ceases.

Is it not recorded in all the books of relative history, that the
Normans, under William the Conqueror, invaded and subjugated Saxon
England and made virtual slaves of the unfortunate countrymen of Harold?
Yet who were the conquered eventually? England was Saxon within fifty
years of Hastings: England is Saxon to-day. The broad bosom of the Saxon
mother, even when the sire of her child was a ravisher, gave out drops
of strength that moulded it in spite of him, to be at last her avenger
and his master! The Saxon pirate still sweeps the seas in his
descendants: the Norman robber is only heard of at long intervals when
he meets his opportunity at a Balaklava. The revenges of history are
fearful; and if the end of human experience is not reached in our
downfall, other races will be careful never to rivet a chain of caste or
color, or so to rivet it that no meddling fingers of fanaticism can ever
unloose the shackle!

Perhaps it is proper as well as inevitable that the negro should have
changed his place and mounted astride of the national neck instead of
being trodden under the national foot. Everything else in our
surroundings has changed--why not he? We do not yet quite understand the
fact--it may be; but the foundations of the old in society have been
broken up as effectually, within the past two years, as were those of
the great deep at the time of Noah's flood. The old deities of fashion
have been swept away in the flood of revolution. The millionaire of two
years ago, intent at that time on the means by which the revenues from
his brown-stone houses and pet railroad stocks could be spent to the
most showy advantage, has become the struggling man of to-day, intent
upon keeping up appearances, and happy if diminished and doubtful rents
can even be made to meet increasing taxes. The struggling man of that
time has meanwhile sprung into fortune and position, through lucky
adventures in government transportations or army-contracts; and the
jewelers of Broadway and Chestnut Street are busy resetting the diamonds
of decayed families, to sparkle on