oping that the unemployed hands over at Jubilee will cultivate
this field for me," he said--"for fair wages, of course. I know nothing
of cotton myself."

"You will be disappointed," said the planter.

"But they must live; they must lay up something for the winter."

"They do not know enough to live. They might exist, perhaps, in Africa,
as the rest of their race exists; but here, in this colder climate, they
must be taken care of, worked, and fed, as we work and feed our
horses--precisely in the same way."

"I can not agree with you," replied David, a color rising in his thin
face. "They are idle and shiftless, I acknowledge that; but is it not
the natural result of generations of servitude and ignorance?"

"They have not capacity for anything save ignorance."

"You do not know then, perhaps, that I--that I am trying to educate
those who are over at Jubilee," said David. There was no aggressive
confidence in his voice; he knew that he had accomplished little as yet.
He looked wistfully at his host as he spoke.

Harnett Ammerton was a born patrician. Poor, homely, awkward David felt
this in every nerve as he sat there; for he loved beauty in spite of
himself, and in spite of his belief that it was a tendency of the old
Adam. (Old Adam has such nice things to bother his descendants with;
almost a monopoly, if we are to believe some creeds.) So now David tried
not to be influenced by the fine face before him, and steadfastly went
on to sow a little seed, if possible, even upon this prejudiced ground.

"I have a school over there," he said.

"I have heard something of the kind, I believe," replied the old
planter, as though Jubilee Town were a thousand miles away, instead of a
blot upon his own border. "May I ask how you are succeeding?"

There was a fine irony in the question. David felt it, but replied
courageously that success, he hoped, would come in time.

"And I, young man, hope that it will never come! The negro with power
in his hand, which you have given him, with a little smattering of
knowledge in his shallow, crafty brain--a knowledge which you and your
kind are now striving to give him--will become an element of more danger
in this land than it has ever known before. You Northerners do not
understand the blacks. They are an inferior race by nature; God made
them so. And God forgive those (although I never can) who have placed
them over us--yes, virtually over us, their former masters--poor
ignorant