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 shirt front, and pointing a deliberate finger at Armstrong, said:

"Hold on, Son, don't waste your breath yet. You're not in the south. I have been closely associated with this young man, Bennet, in the past four years, having been his adviser. I know his heart is clean, his soul white and his family good. If I had a daughter to trust to the care and keeping of a young man I know none to whom I would rather entrust her keeping than to Bennet. I'd be proud to have him as a son.

"I'm a man far along in years. I have watched this country grow; watched sentiments change and shift; watched events drift; I have learned, and I say with all the force within me, that prejudice based on color or race or religion is damnable and is the curse of the country.

"I am prejudiced against some men and women, but my prejudice is based on lack of character and morality, and culture. Prejudice on any other basis is damnable, narrow, and unjust. Besides, unless told I would not know that Bennet was of any race other than white. It is time we forgot races and saw men. It is time we quit pandering to the insincere or ignorant desires for caste distinctions.

"I have many excellent friends in the south. Most of them do not believe as you, Armstrong. And as for your kind it is best not to boast too violently of race purity. Your kind ought to be the last to talk that stuff when out of twelve million people you have spoiled the purity of more than four million by illicit and unwelcomed amalga-