If she
had come to you, as she did to me yesterday, with her theory that all
that Southern Negroes needed was to learn how to make good servants and
lay brick--"
"I should have shown her--" Bles tried to interject.
"Nothing of the sort. You would have tried to show her and would have
failed miserably. She hasn't learned anything in twenty years."
"But surely you didn't join her in advocating that ten million people be
menials?"
"Oh, no; I simply listened."
"Well, there was no harm in that; I believe in silence at times."
"Ah! but I did not listen like a log, but positively and eloquently;
with a nod, a half-formed word, a comment begun, which she finished."
Bles frowned.
"As a result," continued Miss Wynn, "I have a check for five hundred
dollars to finish our cooking-school and buy a cast of Minerva for the
assembly-room. More than that, I have now a wealthy friend. She thinks
me an unusually clever person who, by a process of thought not unlike
her own, has arrived at very similar conclusions."
"But--but," objected Bles, "if the time spent cajoling fools were used
in convincing the honest and upright, think how much we would gain."
"Very little. The honest and upright are a sad minority. Most of these
white folk--believe me, boy," she said caressingly,--"are fools and
knaves: they don't want truth or progress; they want to keep niggers
down.
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