Chapter D: Webster Davis (13)

What has this modern romance in it for the man of to-day? An infinity of example, of hope, of the gleam to follow. The most salient thing about Livingstone's early life is the toil and the privation which he endured gladly, in order to accomplish that which he had set himself to do. Listen to his own words in describing the long hours spent in the cotton-mill. Here he kept up his studies by placing his book on the top of the machine, so that he could catch sentence after sentence as he passed his work, learning how completely to abstract his mind from the noises about him. "Looking back now on that life of toil, I cannot but feel thankful that it formed such a material part of my early education, and were it possible, I would like to begin life over again in the same lowly style, and to pass through the same hardy training."

I wonder how many of the modern men, whose privations in early life in no wise approached those of our hero look back with gratitude upon their early days? Are we not prone to excuse and condone our shortcomings, either of character or of achievement, by murmuring at the hard fate which deprived us of those advantages which more fortunate brothers and sisters enjoyed in infancy and youth? Do we not to-day swing too far in the direction of sickly sentimentality and incline to wrap ourselves, and those about us, in the deadening cotton-wool of too much care? Were it not better if a bit more of the leaven of sturdy struggle were introduced into the life of the present-day youth? Strength of character and strength of soul will rise to their own, no matter what the struggles be to force them upward.

In keeping with this studious concentration which is shown in his work in the cotton-mill, was Livingstone's ideal of thorough preparation for his work. On his first missionary journey, before penetrating into the interior, he stopped at a little station, Lepelole, and there for six months cut himself off from all European society in order to gain an insight into the habits, ways of thinking, laws, and language of the natives. To this he ascribed most of his success as a missionary and explorer, for Livingstone's way was ever the gentle method of those who comprehend--not the harsh cruelty of those who feel superior to the ones among whom they work. In a day whose superficiality is only equalled by the ease with which we gloze over the faults of the unprepared, this bit of information of Livingstone's preparation comes like a refreshing reminder that true worth is always worth while.

When Livingstone gave up his purely missionary labors and turned his life channel into the stream of scientific investigation, the same thoroughness of preparation is shown. He did not work for immediate results, attained by shallow touching of the surface, or for hasty conclusions. His was the close observation and careful and accurate deductions of the mind trained by science to be patient and await results. Rather than be inaccurate, he would wait until he knew he was correct. A quarter of a century after Livingstone died a compatriot of his, Robert Louis Stevenson, said that among the hardest tasks that life sets for a man is "to await occasions, and hurry never." Livingstone learned this thoroughly.

In keeping with the quietness, simplicity, and thoroughness of this truly great man was the meeting between him and Stanley when that redoubtable youth found him in the heart of the Dark Continent. Life is essentially a dramatic thing, for as Carlyle says, "Is not every deathbed the fifth act of a tragedy?" But I sometimes think that we miss the drama and poetry of every-day life because it seems so commonplace. We look abroad and afar for great moments, and great moments pass unheeded each hour. So to those two--the toil-worn and weary explorer and the youthful Stanley, full of enthusiasm, albeit dimmed by the hardships and disappointments of his long search, that moment of first meeting must have seemed essentially commonplace. There was a wonder in the encounter, but like all great emotions and great occasions there was a simplicity, so that the greetings were as commonplace as if occurring in a crowded street. Thirty years had passed since the explorer had dedicated himself to the task of making the world know Africa, and he was an old man, worn-out, bent, frail, and sorrow-stricken. But courage was unfaltering, faith undimmed, power unabated. Had Stanley been a few months later, much of his work would have been lost, and his death even more pitiful than it was--yet he could smile and be patient and unhurried.

As Stanley phrases it, "Suppose Livingstone, following the custom of other travellers, had hurried to the coast, after he had discovered Lake Bangweolo, to tell the news to the geographical world; then had returned to discover Moero, and run away again, then come back once more to discover Kamolondo, and to race back again. But no, he not only discovers the Chambezi, Lake Bangweolo, Luapula River, Lake Moero, Lualaba River, and Lake Kamolondo, but he still tirelessly urges his steps forward to put the final completion to the map of the grand lacustrine river system. Had he followed the example of ordinary explorers, he would have been running backwards and forwards to tell the news, instead of exploring, and he might have been able to write a volume upon the discovery of each lake and earn much money thereby."

This was no negative exploration. It was the hard, earnest labor of years, self-abnegation, enduring patience, and exalted fortitude, such as ordinary men fail to exhibit. And he had achieved a wonderful deed. The finding of the poles, north and south, is no greater feat than his. For, after all, what is it to humanity that the magnetic pole, north or south, is a few degrees east or west of a certain point in the frozen seas and barren ice mountains? What can humanity offer as a reward to those whose bodies lie under cairns of ice save a barren recognition of their heroism? What have their lives served, beyond that of examples of heroism and determination? Bronze tablets will record their deeds, but no races will arise in future years to call them blessed. Cold marble will enshrine their memory; but there will be no fair commerce, nor civilization, nor the thankful prayers of those who have been led to know God.

In his earlier years of exploration, Livingstone became convinced that the success of the white missionary in a field like Africa is not to be reckoned by the tale of doubtful conversions he can send home each year, that the proper work of such men was that of pioneering, opening up, starting new ground, leaving native agents to work it out in detail. The whole of his subsequent career was a carrying out of this idea. It was the idea of commerce, bringing the virgin country within the reach of the world, putting the natives in that relation to the rest of humanity which would most nearly make for their efficiency, if not in their own generation, at least in the next. Shall we not say that this is the truest ideal of social service--to plan, not for the present, but for the future; to be content, not with the barren achievement of exploration, the satisfaction that comes with the saying, "I am the first who has trod this soil!" but to be able to say, "Through me, generations may be helped?"

Says a biographer of Dr. Livingstone, "His work in exploration is marked by rare precision and by a breadth of observation which will make it forever a monument to the name of one of the most intrepid travellers of the nineteenth century. His activity embraced the field of the geographer, naturalist, benefactor of mankind, and it can justly be said that his labors were the first to lift the veil from the 'Dark Continent.'"

During the thirty years of his work he explored alone over one-third of the vast continent; a feat which no single explorer has ever equalled. But it must be remembered that even though he had severed his connection with the missionary society that he regarded himself to the last as a "Pioneer Missionary."

One of the most fascinating subjects of controversy since the time of Herodotus was the problem of the source of the Nile. Poetry, from the description of the Garden of Eden and the writings of Ptolemy to the Kubla Kahn of Coleridge, ran rife over the four fountains out of which flowed the wonderful river. To Livingstone was reserved the supreme honor of settling for all time the secret of this most poetic river of mystery. Long ere this he had been honored with a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society. How futile must the bit of metal have seemed to this dark, silent man, whose mind had grown away from bauble and tinsel, and who had learned in the silences the real value of the trinkets of the world.

When he had discovered the Victoria Falls, he had completed in two years and a half the most remarkable and most fruitful journey on record, reconstructed the map of Africa, and given the world some of the most valuable land it ever could possess. The vast commercial fields of ivory were opened up to trade; the magnificent power of the Victoria Falls laid bare to the sight of civilized man. We can imagine him standing on the brink of the thunderous cataract of the Victoria gazing at its waters as they dashed and roared over the brink of the precipice,

"--Like stout Cortez--when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise,
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

To this man, who had opened up a continent; who had penetrated not only into the heart of the forest, but had made himself one with the savages who were its denizens; who knew and understood them as human beings, and not as beasts, the slavery trade was, as he expressed it, "the open sore of Africa." Over and again he voiced his belief that the Negro freeman was a hundred times more valuable than the slave. He repeatedly enjoined those who had the fitting out of his expeditions not to send him slaves to accompany him on his journeys, but freemen, as they were more trustworthy. He voiced the fundamental truth that he who is his own master is he who obeys and believes in his master.

The slave trade in Africa was dealt its death-blow by Dr. Livingstone. Portugal had foisted the shame of centuries upon the Dark Continent, and openly defied decency and honor. Livingstone's example and his death acted like an inspiration, filling Africa with an army of explorers and missionaries, and raising in Europe so powerful a feeling against the slave trade that it may be considered as having received its death-blow. Dear to his heart was Lincoln, the Emancipator, an ideal hero whom he consistently revered. Away to the southwest from Kamolondo is a large lake which discharges its waters by the important river, Lomami, into the great Lualaba. To this lake, known as the Chobungo by the natives, Dr. Livingstone gave the name of Lincoln, in memory of him for whom your noble institution was named. This was done because of a vivid impression produced on his mind by hearing a portion of Lincoln's inauguration speech from an English pulpit, which related to the causes that induced him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. To the memory of the man whom Livingstone revered he has contributed a monument more durable than brass or stone.

This strange, seemingly almost ascetic man sets before us of to-day an almost impossible standard of living. One idea mastered him--to give Africa to the world. His life was a success, as all lives must be which have a single aim. Life was clear, elemental almost to him, and to the man whose ambition is a unit; who sees but one goal, shining clearly ahead, success is inevitable, though it may be masked under the guise of poverty and hardship. Livingstone had a higher and nobler ambition than the mere pecuniary sum he might receive, or the plaudits of the unthinking multitude; he followed the dictates of duty. Never was such a willing slave to that abstract virtue. His inclination impelled him home, the fascinations of which it required the sternest resolves to resist. With every foot of new ground he travelled over, he forged a chain of sympathy which should hereafter bind all other nations to Africa. If he were able to complete this chain, a chain of love, by actual discovery and description of the people and nations that still lived in darkness, so as to attract the good and charitable of his own land to bestir themselves for their redemption and salvation--this, Livingstone would consider an ample reward. "A delirious and fatuous enterprise, a Quixotic scheme!" some will say. Not so; he builded better than even he knew or dared hope, and posterity will reap the reward.

The missionary starting out must resolve to bear poverty, suffering, hardship, and, if need be, to lose his life. The explorer must resolve to be impervious to exquisite little tortures, to forget comforts, and be a stranger to luxuries; to lose _his_ life, even, in order that the world may add another line or dot to its maps. The explorer-missionary must do all these things, and add to them the zeal for others that shall illumine his labors, and make him at one with God. David Livingstone had all these qualities, coupled with the sublime indifference of the truly great to the mere side issues of life. You and I sit down to our comfortable meals, sleep in our well-appointed beds, read our Bibles with perfunctory boredom, and babble an occasional prayer for those who endure hardships--when we are reminded from the pulpit to do so. When we read of some awful calamity, such as has blazoned across the pages of history within the past few weeks, we shudder that men should lay down their lives in the barren wastes of ice. When we read of the thirty years of steady suffering which Livingstone endured in the forests of Africa, the littleness of our own lives comes home to us with awful realization. You who fear to walk the streets with a coat of last year's cut, listen to his half whimsical account of how he "came to the Cape in 1852, with a black coat eleven years out of fashion, and Mrs. Livingstone and the children half naked." You who shudder at the tale of a starving child in the papers, and lamely wonder why the law allows such things, read his recital of the sufferings of his wife and little ones during the days without water under a tropic sun, and of the splendid heroism of the mother who did not complain, and the father who did not dare meet her eye, for fear of the unspoken reproach therein.

He was never in sufficient funds, and what little means he could gather here and there were often stolen from him, or he found himself cheated out of what few supplies he could get together to carry on his travels. Months of delay occurred, and sometimes it seemed that all his labors and struggles would end in futility; that the world would be little better for his sufferings; yet that patient, Christian fortitude sustained him with unfaltering courage through the most distressing experiences. Disease, weakening, piteous, unromantic, unheroic, wasted his form; ulcers, sores, horrible and hideous, made his progress slow and his work sometimes a painful struggle over what many a man would have deemed impossible barriers. The loss of his wife came to him twelve years after she had elected to cast in her lot with his, but like Brutus of old, he could exclaim,

"With meditating that she must die once,
I have the patience to endure it now.

Stanley could but marvel at such patience. On that memorable day when they met, and the younger man gave the doctor his letters, he tells how "Livingstone kept the letter-bag on his knee, then, presently opened it, looked at the letters contained there, read one or two of his children's letters, his face in the meanwhile lighting up. He asked me to tell him the news, "No, Doctor," said I, "read your letters first, which I am sure you must be impatient to read." "Ah," said he, "I have waited years for letters, and I have been taught patience."

To you, of the younger generation, what a marvel, what a world of meaning in those words--"I have been taught patience." We, who fret and chafe because the whole world will not bend its will to our puny strivings, and turn its whole course that we might have our unripe desires fulfilled, should read and re-read of the man who could wait, because he knew that time and all eternity would be bent to meet his desires in time.

Livingstone's is a character that we cannot help but venerate; that calls forth all one's enthusiasm; that evokes nothing but sincerest admiration. He was sensitive, but so is any man of a high mind and generous nature; he was sensitive on the point of being doubted or criticised by the easy-chair geographers, lolling comfortably in their clubs and scanning through their monocles the maps which the hard working travellers had made. He was humble-souled, as are all the truly great. His gentleness never forsook him; his hopefulness never deserted him. No harassing anxiety, distraction of mind, long separation from home and kindred, could make him complain. He thought all would come out right at last, such faith had he in the goodness of Providence. The sport of adverse circumstances; the plaything of the miserable slaves, which were persistently sent him from Zanzibar, baffled and worried, even almost to the grave; yet he would not desert the charge imposed upon him. To the stern dictates of duty alone did he sacrifice his home and ease, the pleasures, refinements, and luxuries of civilized life. His was the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring heroism of the Englishman--never to relinquish his work, though his heart yearned for home; never to surrender his obligations, until he could write "Finis" to his work.

Yet who shall say that the years spent alone at the very heart of Nature had not made him the possessor of that "inward eye," which, as Wordsworth says, "is the bliss of solitude." For many years he lived in Africa deprived of books, and yet when Stanley found him, he learned to his surprise, that Livingstone could still recite whole poems from Byron, Burns, Tennyson, Longfellow, and other great poets. The reason is found in the fact that all his life he lived within himself. He lived in a world in which he revolved inwardly, out of which he awoke only to attend to his immediate practical necessities. It was a happy inner world, peopled with his own friends, acquaintances, relatives, readings, ideas, and associations. Blessed is the man who has found the inner life more real than the trivial outer one. To him mere external annoyances are but as the little insects, which he may brush away at will. No man can be truly great who has not built up for himself a subjective world into which he may retire at will. The little child absorbed in a mythical land peopled by fairies and Prince Charmings is nearest to possessing such an inner life; and we must become as little children. To some it is a God-given gift; others may acquire it, as Jack London tells us, by "going into the waste places, and there sitting down with our souls." There comes then, the overwhelming realization of the charms and beauties of nature--man is a pygmy, an abstraction, an unreality. This had come to our hero. Added to the strength of his inner life Livingstone had the deep sympathy with Nature in all her moods. He became enthusiastic when he described the beauties of the Moero scenery. The splendid mountains, tropical vegetation, thundering cataracts, noble rivers, stirred his soul into poetic expression. His tired spirit expanded in the presence of the charms of nature. He could never pass through an African forest, with its solemn stillness and serenity, without wishing to be buried quietly under the dead leaves where he would be sure to rest undisturbed. In England, there was no elbow-room, the graves were often desecrated, and ever since he had buried his wife in the woods of Shupanga, he had sighed for just such a spot, where his weary bones would receive the eternal rest they coveted. But even this last wish was denied him, and the noisy honors and crowded crypt of Westminster Abbey claimed him, far away from the splendid solitude he craved. All Africa should have been his tomb. He should never have been forced to share with hundreds of others a meagre and scant resting-place. Yet there is food for rejoicing in the knowledge, that though his body was borne away, his heart was buried by his beloved natives in the forest.

The study of Dr. Livingstone would not be even superficially complete if we did not take the religious side of his character into consideration. By religion, we do not mean the faith he professed, the particular tenets he believed, the especial catechism he studied, or any hair-splitting doctrine he might have upheld, but that deeper ethical side of manhood, without which there can be no true manhood. Livingstone's religion was not of the theoretical kind, but it was a constant, earnest, sincere practise. It was neither demonstrative nor loud, but manifested itself in a quiet, practical way, and was always at work. It was not aggressive, nor troublesome, nor impertinent. In him, religion exhibited its loveliest features; it governed his conduct not only towards his servants, but towards the natives, the bigoted Mohammedans, and all with whom he came in contact. Without it, Livingstone, with his ardent temperament, his enthusiasm, his high spirit and courage, must have become uncompanionable, and a hard master. Religion had tamed him, and made him a Christian gentleman; the crude and wilful were refined and subdued; religion had made him the most companionable of men and indulgent of masters--a man whose society was pleasurable to a high degree.

If his life held for us no other message than this, it would hold enough. Unfortunately the youth of to-day is apt to chafe when the ideal of Christianity and manly religion is held up to him. He thinks of the religious man as a milksop, a mollycoddle. He cannot associate him in his mind with the doing of great deeds, the thinking of great thoughts. His ideal of manhood is the ruthless Man on Horseback, with too often a disregard of the sacred things of life. Sometimes, if the youth of to-day thinks at all, he runs riot into ethics, forgetting that, after all, there could be no ethics without a firm base of religion. And so he wastes many precious years before he learns that all the greatest men whom the world has known drew their strength and power from the unseen and the spiritual.

We have noticed that Livingstone's religion was not aggressive nor impertinent. Early in his career as a missionary, he recognized the truth that if he were to exercise any influence on the native Africans, it would not be by bringing to them an abstraction in place of their own savage ideals. His influence depended entirely upon persuasion, and by awakening within their minds the sense of right and wrong. "We never wished them to do right," he says, "because it would be pleasing to us, nor think themselves to blame when they did wrong." Worldly affairs, and temporal benefits with the natives were paramount, so he did not force abstractions upon them but, with a keen insight into human nature, as well as into savage human nature, he reached their higher selves through the more worldly.

His was a pure and tender-hearted nature, full of humanity and sympathy, modest as a maiden, unconscious of his own greatness, with the simplicity we have noted before, the simplicity of the truly great. His soul could be touched to its depths by the atrocities of the Arab slave-traders, yet he forgot his own sufferings in the desire to make others immune from suffering. He had but one rule of life, that which he gave to the Scotch school children, whom he once addressed:

"Fear God and work hard!"

* * * * *

It is one hundred years since this quiet, high-souled man was given the world, in the little Scotch village, and yet another hundred may pass away and still his life will be as a clarion call to the youth of the world to emulate his manhood. For the world needs men now, as it never needed them before,

"Men, high-minded men,
With powers as far above dull brutes endued
In forest brake or den, as beasts excel cold rocks and rambles rude."

Such a man was Livingstone, not afraid to be meek in order to be great; not afraid to "fear God and work hard;" not ashamed to stoop in order that he might raise others to his high estate. He gave the world a continent and a conscience; with the lavishness almost of Nature herself he bestowed cataracts and rivers, lakes and mountains, forests and valleys, upon his native land. He stirred the soul of the civilized world to the atrocities of the slave trade, and he made it realize that humanity may be found even in the breast of a savage. When he laid down his life in the forest he loved, he laid upon the altar of humanity and science the costliest and sweetest sacrifice that it had known for many a weary age.

What message has this life for us to-day, we the commonplace, the mediocre, the unknown to fame and fortune? Shall we fold our hands when we read of such heroes and say, "Ah, yes, he could be great, but I? I am weak and humble, I have not the opportunity?" Who was more humble than the poor boy spinning in the cotton-mill; who was less constrained by Fortune's frowns than the humble missionary? His life brings to us the message of doing well with that little we have.

We cannot all be with Peary at the North Pole, nor die the death of the hero, Scott, on the frozen Antarctic continent. It is not given to us to be explorers; it is not given us to be pioneers; we may not discover vast continents, name great lakes, nor gaze with wonder-stricken eyes upon the rolling of a mighty unknown river. But to each and all of us comes the divine opportunity to carve for himself a niche, be it ever so tiny, in the memories of men. We can heed the admonition of Carlyle, "Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even a Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee, out with it then!"

The life of service; the life of unselfish giving--this must Livingstone's life mean to us. Unselfish, ungrudging lavishing of life and soul, even to the last drop of heart's blood. Service that does not hesitate because the task seems small, or the waiting weary; service that does not fear to be of no account in the eyes of the world. Truly, indeed, might Wordsworth's apostrophe to Milton be ascribed to him:

"Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way
In cheerful godliness, and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay."

EDUCATION FOR MANHOOD[48]

BY KELLY MILLER

[Note 48: Reprinted from _Kelly Miller's Monographic Magazine_, April, 1913.]

We must keep clearly in mind the proposition that the educational process is always under domination of contemporary opinion. The education prescribed for any class is likely to be conditioned upon the presumed relationship of that class to the social body. When woman was regarded as an inferior creature, whose destiny was to serve as a tool and plaything of man, she was accorded only such education as would fit her for this subsidiary function. Any other training was regarded as unnecessary and mischievous. It is only within comparatively recent times, when man began to realize the essential human quality and powers of the female sex, and deemed it not mockery to place her on the same footing with himself, that the comprehensive education of woman has become a possibility.

The traditional relation of the American Negro to the society of which he forms a part is too well known to need extensive treatment in this connection. The African slave was introduced into this country as a pure animal instrumentality to perform the rougher work under dominion of his white lord and master. There was not the remotest thought of his human personality. No more account was taken of his higher qualities than of the higher susceptibilities of the lower animals. His mission was considered to be as purely mechanical as that of the ox which pulls the plow. Indeed, his human capabilities were emphatically denied. It was stoutly contended that he did not possess a soul to be saved in the world to come nor a mind to be enlightened in the world that now is. Under the dominion of this dogma, education was absolutely forbidden him. It became a crime even to attempt to educate this _tertium quid_ which was regarded as little more than brute and little less than human. The white race, in its arrogant conceit, constituted the personalities and the Negro the instrumentalities. Man may be defined as a distinction-making animal. He is ever prone to set up barriers between members of his own species and to deny one part of God's human creatures the inalienable birthright vouchsafed to all alike. But the process was entirely logical and consistent with the prevailing philosophy.

The anti-slavery struggle stimulated the moral energy of the American people in a manner that perhaps has never had a parallel in the history of vicarious endeavor. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." In dealing with fundamental principles of human rights and human wrongs involved in the issue of slavery, these moral reformers found that the Negro was a human being, endowed with heart and mind and conscience like as themselves; albeit these powers of personality had long been smothered and imbruted by centuries of suppression and harsh usage. These philanthropists believed in the essential manhood of the Negro. This belief was the chief dynamic of their endeavor. Upon this foundation they not only broke the Negro's chain, but clothed him with political and civic prerogative as an American citizen. They established schools and colleges and universities for him because they believed in his higher susceptibilities. To-day we are almost astounded at the audacity of their faith. They projected a scheme of education comparable with the standards set up for the choicest European youth for a race which had hitherto been submerged below the zero point of intelligence. These schools and colleges founded and fostered on this basis were the beginnings of the best that there is in the race and the highest which it can hope to be.

But, alas, as the passion engendered by the war grew weaker and weaker, the corresponding belief in the Negro has also declined, and the old dogma concerning his mission as a human tool has begun to reassert itself. In certain sections the white race has always claimed that the Negro should not be encouraged in the development of personality. The denial of the designation "mister" is suggestive of this disposition. With them the term "mister" is made to mean a direct designation of personality. There is no objection to such titles as "doctor," "reverend" or "professor," as these connote professional rather than personal quality.

Our whole educational activities are under the thrall of this retrograde spirit. We are marking time rather than moving forward. The work is being carried on rather than up. Our bepuzzled pedagogues are seriously reflecting over the query, _Cui bono?_--Is it worth while? Few, indeed, are left who have the intensity of belief and the intrepidity of spirit to defend the higher pretentions of the Negro without apology or equivocation. The old form of appeal has become insipid and uninspiring; the ear has become dull to its dinging. The old blade has become blunt and needs a new sharpness of point and keenness of edge. Where now is heard the tocsin call whose key-note a generation ago resounded from the highlands of Kentucky and Tennessee to the plains of the Carolinas calling the black youths, whose hopes ran high within their bosoms, to rise and make for higher things? This clarion note, though still for the nonce, shall not become a lost chord. Its inspiring tones must again appeal to the youth to arise to their higher assertion and exertion. If you wish to reach and inspire the life of the people, the approach must be made not to the intellectual, nor yet to the feelings, as the final basis of appeal, but to the manhood that lies back of these. That education of youth, especially the suppressed class, that does not make insistent and incessant appeals to the smothered manhood (I had almost said godhood) within, will prove to be but vanity and vexation of spirit. What boots a few chapters in Chemistry, or pages in History, or paragraphs in Philosophy, unless they result in an enlarged appreciation of one's own manhood? Those who are to stand in the high places of intellectual, moral, and spiritual leadership of such a people in such a time as this must be made to feel deep down in their own souls their own essential manhood. They must believe that they are created in the image of God and that nothing clothed in human guise is a more faithful likeness of the original. This must be the dominant note in the education of the Negro. If the note itself is not new, there must at least be a newness of emphasis and insistence. The Negro must learn in school what the white boy absorbs from association and environment. The American white man in his ordinary state is supremely conscious of his manhood prerogative. He may be ignorant or poor or vicious; yet he never forgets that he is a man. But every feature of our civilization is calculated to impress upon the Negro a sense of his inferiority and to make him feel and believe that he is good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of other men. A race, like an individual, that compromises its own self-respect, paralyzes and enfeebles its own energies. The motto which should be engraved upon the conscience of every American Negro is that which Milton places in the mouth of His Satanic Majesty: "The mind is its own place and of itself can make a heaven of hell; a hell of heaven." To inculcate this principle is the highest mission of the higher education. The old theologians used to insist upon the freedom of the will, but the demand of the Negro to-day is for the freedom and independence of his own spirit. Destroy this and all is lost; preserve it, and though political rights, civil privileges, industrial opportunities be taken away for the time, they will all be regained.

By the development of manhood on the part of the Negro nothing is farther from my thought than the inculcation of that pugnacious, defiant disposition which vents itself in wild ejaculations and impotent screaming against the evils of society. I mean the full appreciation of essential human qualities and claims, and the firm, unyielding determination to press forward to the mark of this calling, and not to be swerved from its pursuit by doubt, denial, danger, rebuff, ridicule, insult, and contemptuous treatment. While the Negro may not have it within his power to resist or overcome these things, he must preserve the integrity of his own soul.

The higher education of the Negro up to this point has been very largely under the direction and control of philanthropy. The support has come almost wholly from that source. The development of this sense of manhood should be the highest concern of a wise, discriminating philanthropy, for if this is once developed the Negro will be able to handle his own situation and relieve his philanthropic friends from further consideration or concern; but, if he fails to develop this spirit of manhood, he will be but a drag upon the resources of philanthropy for all times to come.

The Negro must develop courage and self-confidence. A grasp upon the principles of knowledge gives the possessor the requisite spirit of confidence. To the timid, the world is full of mystery manipulated and controlled by forces and powers beyond their ken to comprehend. But knowledge convinces us that there is no mystery in civilization. The railroad, the steamship, and the practical projects that loom so large to the unreflecting, are but the result of the application of thought to things. The mechanical powers and forces of Nature are open secrets for all who will undertake to unravel the mystery. And so it is with essential and moral principles. The one who will have himself rooted and grounded in the fundamental principles of things can look with complacence upon the panorama of the world's progress. The Negro should plant one foot on the Ten Commandments and the other on the Binomial Theorem: he can then stand steadfast and immovable, however the rain of racial wrath may fall or the angry winds of prejudice may blow and beat upon him.

The educated Negro must learn to state his own case and to plead his own cause before the bar of public opinion. No people who raise up from out their midst a cultivated class, who can plead their own cause and state their own case, will fail of a hearing before the just judgment of mankind.

The educated Negro to-day represents the first generation grown to the fullness of the stature of manhood under the influence and power of education. They are the first ripened fruit of philanthropy, and by them alone will the wisdom or folly of that philanthropy be justified. The hope of the race is focused in them. They are the headlight to direct the pathway through the dangers and vicissitudes of the wilderness. For want of vision, the people perish; for want of wise direction, they stumble and fall. There is no body of men in the world to-day, nor in the history of the world, who have, or ever have had, greater responsibilities or more coveted opportunities than devolves upon the educated Negro to-day. It is, indeed, a privilege to be a Negro of light and leading in such a time as this. The incidental embarrassments and disadvantages which for the time being must be endured are not to be compared with the far more exceeding weight of privileges and glory which awaits him if he rises to these high demands. For such a privilege well may he forego the pleasure of civilization for a season.

His world consists of 10,000,000 souls, who have wrapped up in them all the needs and necessities, powers and possibilities, of human nature; they contain all the norms of civilization, from its roots to its florescence. His is the task to develop and vitalize these smothered faculties and potentialities. His education will prove to be but vanity and vexation of spirit, unless it ultimates in this task. He is the salt of the earth, and if the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? If the light within the racial world be darkness, how great is that darkness?

The highest call of the civilization of the world to-day is to the educated young men of the belated races. The educated young manhood of Japan, China, India, Egypt, and Turkey must lift their own people up to the level of their own high conception. They must partake of the best things in the civilization of Europe and show them unto their own people. The task of the educated American Negro is the same as theirs, intensified, perhaps, by the more difficult and intricate tangle of circumstances and conditions with which he has to deal.

He cannot afford to sink into slothful satisfaction and enjoy a tasteless leisure or with inane self-deception hide his head under the shadows of his wings, like the foolish bird, which thereby hopes to escape the wrath to come. The white race, through philanthropy, has done much; but its vicarious task culminated when it developed the first generation of educated men and women. They must do the rest.

These philanthropists spoke for us when our tongues were tied. They pleaded our cause when we were speechless; but now our faculties have been unloosed. We must stand upon our own footing. In buffeting the tempestuous torrents of the world we must either swim on the surface or sink out of sight. The greatest gratitude that the beneficiary can show to the benefactor is, as soon as possible, to do without his benefaction. The task of race statesmanship and reclamation devolves upon the educated Negro of this day and generation. Moral energy must be brought to bear upon the task, whether the Negro be engaged in the production of wealth or in the more recondite pursuits which minister to the higher needs of man.

The white race is fast losing faith in the Negro as an efficient and suitable factor in the equation of our civilization. Curtailment of political, civil, and religious privilege and opportunity is but the outward expression of this apostasy. As the white man's faith decreases, our belief in ourselves must increase. Every Negro in America should utter this prayer, with his face turned toward the light: "Lord, I believe in my own inherent manhood; help Thou my unbelief." The educated Negro must express his manhood in terms of courage, in the active as well as in the passive voice: courage to do, as well as to endure; courage to contend for the right while suffering wrong; the courage of self-belief that is always commensurate with the imposed task. The world believes in a race that believes in itself; but justly despises the self-bemeaned. Such is the mark and the high calling to which the educated Negro of to-day is called. May he rise to the high level of it. Never was there a field whiter unto harvest; never was there louder cry for laborers in the vineyard of the Lord.

A FEW REMARKS ON MAKING A LIFE[49]

BY ROBERT E. JONES, LL. D.

_Editor Southwestern Christian Advocate, New Orleans, La._

[Note 49: Extracts from Commencement address delivered at Tuskegee Institute, May 29, 1913.]

I have a story to relate, and at once I want to present to you my hero,--a hero more inspiring than Achilles of the "Iliad," or Odysseus of the "Odyssey," or AEneas of the "AEneid."

My hero is not a myth, not a creation of literature, not a tradition, but not unlike the Grecian hero in that he sprung from the union of a god and a mortal. My hero is not reckoned among the high and mighty nor will his name ever be carved on stone or raised on bronze. Neither has my hero accomplished startling feats. As a hero he may be a paradox. Inconspicuous, humble in station, modest, hid far away from the maddening, jealous, curious, bickering, taunting, striving, restless crowd of life. Too long already I have held him from you. His name? I do not know. His birthplace? I do not know. His age? I do not know. Is he living now? Here my ignorance is painful. I do not know. My hero, however, is an actual man of flesh and blood. I met him but twice in life, but was so charmed I did not ask his name. His personality thrilled and he in a measure has become my patron saint. He is not a hero of large and commanding stature, but a cripple--doubly so. His arms were palsied and turned in so that he could not use a crutch, his lower limbs turned in also. He sat in an ordinary cane-bottomed chair and could easily move himself about by throwing the weight of his body from one back leg of the chair to the other, lifting the front legs at the same time. I saw him along the train side at Spartanburg, S. C.

A beggar? No, my young friends, beggars are seldom heroes. He was a merchant prince. He carried his goods around his neck and shoulders and in his outer coat pockets. He was selling shoe-strings and pencils. If you gave him a dime he would insist on your taking one or both of the articles he had for sale. In his activities he was a fine lesson of the first requirement of life. He was self-sustaining. By the sweat of his brow he earned his bread.

Did he complain of his lot? Not a bit of it. His handicap he did not make nor could undo. He therefore accepted his condition philosophically; he was self-respecting. He knew his limitations; he knew what he could do and what he could not do; he was self-knowing. Knowing his handicap and that it was quite unlike any other man's and that he needed a means of locomotion, he found it; he had, therefore, initiative. He leaned not upon the strength of others, but used his own resources; he was therefore self-reliant. He did not wait for business to come to him, he put himself in the path of business; he was a hustler. He saw life through a cheerful lens and kept a stout heart; he was optimistic. He recognized his own personality apart from the personalities of the crowded throng through which he passed; he was a self-contented individual. He had but one life to live and he was making the most of life. When I left him I crowned him, honored him, and I love him for his worth as a true man.

"I like a man who faces what he must,
With step triumphant and a heart of cheer;
Who fights the daily battles without fear;
Nor loses faith in man; but does his best,
Nor ever murmurs at his humble lot,
But, with a smile, and words of hope, gives zest
To every toiler; he alone is great
Who by a life heroic conquers fate."

When once away from my hero, as I thought of him in my deepest soul, I cried:

"Thou art my chastiser and my inspirator. Thou art simple yet great; untaught thyself, thou art the teacher of all. Henceforth thou shalt be my hero and guide. Doubting myself, bemoaning my limitations, depressed by my failure, ashamed of my achievements, my seeing you has given me a new interpretation of life. I own you my friend, my life's inspiration and hero."

There is my hero. You ask his color? What difference does it make? Men have often refused to recognize worth because of color. But to satisfy you I will tell you. He is a Negro. Give a seat of honor to my hero. Gather inspiration and learn from him the lessons of life, if you will. Here is an individual doubly afflicted, without a word of complaint, or a fret or whine, depending upon his own initiative and resources, making the most of life under the circumstances which surround him.

Upon the basis of what has been said, in closing this address to the graduating Class of 1913 of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute I desire to offer a personal word:

In the first place, you will know a year from now, more than you can realize at this present moment, that this is a commencement. This is not the climax of your life. It is but the beginning, and however paradoxical it may seem, you are not at the top of the ladder, you are at the foot. We are here to applaud you to-day not so much on what you have already accomplished as to give you a send-off for the strenuous tasks that lie before you. To be frank with you, young men and young women, the life in earnest that awaits you without will tax every bit of your strength. Your moral strength will be drawn upon, as well as your intellectual resources.

Secondly; had I my way I would have each of you burn your diploma and never refer to it as an indication of what you are and what you know. Do not attempt to pass through the world on your diploma or your class standing. The world cares little for these. I would urge that you prove to the world what you are by what you can do--that you let your achievements point to your diploma.

Thirdly; you go forth to-day as a representative of this institution, mantled with all the sacred honors, prestige, and commendation that this institution, State, and your admirers can bestow. See to it that you keep the honors of this hour unsoiled and that you disgrace not the noble history of your alma mater.

Fourthly; I do not believe that this institution is fostered with the idea that the few students who gather here from time to time only shall be reached. I rather suspect that the dollars that come from the State and generous friends come with the hope that as you have been helped and lifted to culture and refinement, you in turn will carry culture to those who may never be permitted to stay in these walls. You are to carry light into dark places and unto those who sit in darkness. By your arm of strength you are to lift the poor who are beneath you. And then your education comes not for self-culture, not for self-enjoyment, not for self-use, but for the betterment of those who are about you.

Fifthly; you go forth as the embodiment of a new generation. You stand to-day upon the foundation built by those who have gone before you. They have wrought well. By their toil and suffering you are blest. You are to carry your generation one notch higher and thus help the onward march of the world's progress. Be thou faithful. Lift your eyes heavenward and aspire to do the best and be the noblest according to God's heritage to you. There are no chosen depths, no prescribed heights to which you may climb.

"Honor and shame from no condition rise,
Act well your part, there all the honor lies."

Make the most of life!

EMANCIPATION AND RACIAL ADVANCEMENT[50]

BY THE REV. ERNEST LYON, D.D., LL.D.

[Note 50: An address delivered upon the invitation of the citizens of Brownsville, Pa., on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and also to celebrate the event of Decoration Day, May 30, 1913.]

_Mr. Chairman, Members of the Celebration Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen:_

We are not here to-day in the capacity of the priest performing the funeral rights over the graves of the dead; neither are we here simply to offer tribute to their memory, by the time-honored custom of decorating their graves with the faded tokens of a nation's love and gratitude; but we are here, ladies and gentlemen, to cheer the hearts of the living--not by an optimism impossible of realization--but by a candid and truthful report of the conduct of that legacy of freedom, which came to us fifty years ago, through the sacrifice and death of the patriots, living and dead, whose memories are honored to-day all over this broad land of ours.

The civilized world will watch for the newspaper reports of to-morrow to learn the sentiments of the American people uttered to-day upon many of the burning issues before the Congress of the United States, relating to our domestic and foreign policies. The opportunities, which this day gives, will be seized by national orators to record their convictions upon matters of morality, politics, and diplomacy. Japan will listen with keen, diplomatic interest to every utterance, official or unofficial, touching the vexing problems involved in the so-called "Yellow Peril" and in the Anti-Alien Land legislation, which, like Segregation and the Jimcrowism of the South, have been enacted into laws discriminating against citizens, not aliens, but citizens of the United States of America, such as we are.

Many to-day believe that the gravity of these international matters will force the Decoration Day orators to ignore the Negro question, which, in some form or other, has been the livest question in American politics for nearly three centuries. In this belief I think they will be disappointed, for no question before the American people to-day, whether national or international, can overshadow the Negro question in America, and no day as historic as this would be complete in its observance without some reference to it.