Page:John Brown (1899).pdf/68

 and vast compass, after playing a long time a very low and subdued accompaniment, they perceive the time arrived when they can strike in with effect and take a master's part in the music. The civility of the world has reached that pitch that their more than moral genius is becoming indispensable, and the quality of this race is to be honored for itself."

Alas! is there a keener sorrow than for the children of the men who held this hope, and lived and died upon it, to have to ask themselves, Has the negro question been changed in any essential respect by emancipation and enfranchisement? Have those great things done any good to a people who could not do the good for themselves?

The misgiving expressed by Brown himself in this clever little essay on "Sambo's Mistakes" is, to me, a proof of his clear intuition. The fact that he utterly disregarded the suspicion in his