Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/66

 a divine mission this morning. I mean to establish a high school in this village for the negroes, and to build a Baptist church for them. I learn from them that they have great faith in you. Many of them desire your approval and co-operation. Will you help me?"

"To be perfectly frank, I will not. You ask me for plain English. I will give it to you. Your presence in this village as a missionary to the heathen is an insult to our intelligence and Christian manhood. You come at this late day a missionary among the heathen, the heathen whose heart and brain created this Republic with civil and religious liberty for its foundations, a missionary among the heathen who gave the world Washington, whose giant personality three times saved the cause of American Liberty from ruin when his army had melted away. You are a missionary among the children of Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, Jackson, Clay and Calhoun! Madam, I have baptised into the fellowship of the church of Christ in this county more negroes than you ever saw in all your life before you left Boston.

"At the close of the war there were thousands of negro members of white Baptist churches in the state. Your mission is not to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. Your mission is to teach crack-brained theories of social and political equality to four millions of ignorant negroes, some of whom are but fifty years removed from the savagery of African jungles. Your work is to separate and alienate the negroes from their former masters who can be their only real friends and guardians. Your work is to sow the dragon's teeth of an impossible social order that will bring forth its harvest of blood for our children."

He paused a moment, and, suddenly facing her continued, "I should like to help the cause you have at heart: and the most effective service I could render it now would