Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/129

Rh and good man, and was very industrious and father thought much of him." Once we find him saying: "If you find it difficult for you to pay for Douglass' paper, I wish you would let me know, as I know I took liberty in ordering it continued. You have been very kind in helping me and I do not mean to make myself a burden." And again he writes: "I am much rejoiced at the news of a religious kind in Ruth's letter and would be still more rejoiced to learn that all the sects who bear the Christian name would have no more to do with that mother of all abominations—man-stealing."

And the sects were thinking. All men were thinking. A great unrest was on the land. It was not merely moral leadership from above—it was the push of physical and mental pain from beneath;—not simply the cry of the Abolitionist but the up-stretching of the slave. The vision of the damned was stirring the western world and stirring black men as well as white. Something was forcing the issue—call it what you will, the Spirit of God or the spell of Africa. It came like some great grinding ground swell,—vast, indefinite, immeasurable but mighty, like the dark low whispering of some infinite disembodied voice—a riddle of the Sphinx. It tore men's souls and wrecked their faith. Women cried out as cried once that tall black sibyl, Sojourner Truth: