Three-inch sadness

  

“This analysis of existing conditions and tendencies in the South is one to which the South itself and the entire nation should give heed. Mr. Schurz clearly perceives a dangerous drift. Slavery ideas are again asserting themselves. The movement to extinguish the Negro’s political rights is unconcealed. By craftily devised and inequitable laws the suffrage is taken from him. With all this go naturally the desire and purpose to keep him forever ‘alongside the mule.’ Negro education is looked upon with increasing hostility. 90 Every door of hope opening into the professions is slammed in the face of black men merely because they are black. The South works itself up into hysterics over the President’s spontaneous recognition of manhood under a black skin. While philanthropists and teachers are laboring to raise the Negro to the full level of citizenship, an open and determined effort is making at the South to thrust him back into serfdom. As Mr. Schurz says, the issue is upon the country, for one tendency or the other must prevail.

“It is his view of the great urgency of the juncture which leads him to address a moving appeal to the South’s best. He implores its leading men to bestir themselves to prevent the lamentable injustice which is threatened, and partly executed. By withstanding the mob; by upholding the law; by ridding themselves of the silly dread of ‘social equality’; by contending for Negro education of the broadest sort; by hailing every step upward which the black man may take; by insisting upon the equality of all men before the law, they can, Mr. Schurz argues forcibly, do much to save the South and the country from the disgrace and calamity of a new slavery. To this plea every humane patriot will add his voice. 91 Mr. Schurz’s paper is also a challenge to the mind and conscience of the North. Unless they, too, respond to the cause of the Negro—which to-day is the cause of simple justice—it will languish and die.
“WHAT ‘THE OUTLOOK’ THINKS
“It must not be forgotten that the so-called race question is the only capital which a small group of Southern politicians of the old school still possess. They have no other questions or issues; they depend upon the race question for a livelihood, and they use every occasion to say the most extreme things and to set the match to all the inflammable material in the South. To these politicians several occurrences which have happened lately have been a great boon, and they are making the most of them. But there is a large, influential and growing group of Southern men, loyal to their section, equally loyal to the nation, open-minded and high-minded, who are eager to give the South a new policy, to rid it of sectionalism, to organize its spiritual, moral and intellectual forces, to develop education, and to treat great questions from a national rather than from a sectional point of view; men like Governor Aycock, 92 of North Carolina, and Governor Montague, of Virginia. There is a whole group of educational leaders who represent the best of the Old South and the best of the New. It is the duty of wise, patriotic men in the North to cooperate with these new leaders; to strengthen their hands; to recognize and aid the best sentiment in the South, and to stimulate its activity. The Negro question can be settled by cooperation of the North with the South, by sympathy, by understanding; it can never be settled in any other way.


“I am proud of my state because we have solved the Negro problem, which recently seems to have given you some trouble. We have taken him out of politics, and have thereby secured good government under any party, and laid foundations for the future development of both races. We have secured peace and rendered prosperity a certainty. I am inclined to give you our solution of this problem. It is, first, as far as possible, under the Fifteenth Amendment, to disfranchise him; after that, let him alone; quit writing about him; quit talking about him; quit making him ‘the white man’s burden’; let him ‘tote his own skillet’; 93 quit coddling him; let him learn that no man, no race, ever got anything worth the having that he did not himself earn; that character is the outcome of sacrifice, and worth is the result of toil; that, whatever his future may be, the present has in it for him nothing that is not the product of industry, thrift, obedience to law and uprightness; that he cannot, by resolution of council or league, accomplish anything; that he can do much by work; that violence may gratify his passions, but it cannot accomplish his ambition; that he may rarely eat of the cooking equality, but he will always find when he does that there is death in the pot. Let the white man determine that no man shall by act or thought or speech cross this line, and the race problem will be at an end.”

After reading these the Doctor explained that, about the time I left, the Negro population of the South began to drift towards the Northern states, where better wages were offered, on account of the improvements going on there.

“The farms were the first to be affected by this turn in affairs,” said the Doctor. “In fact, the Negroes who had no land very generally left the farms and this so crippled the cotton industry that 94 within ten years after the disfranchising acts were passed, there wasn’t a ‘ten horse’ farm (to quote the expression used in the records) to be found in some of the Southern states for miles and miles. Every Negro laborer who went North found times so much better that he wrote back for his friends. The disfranchising acts seemed to give the disorderly element in Southern society a free hand. The result was that Negroes were mobbed with impunity for the slightest offences. In one instance I read of a Negro who accidentally stepped on a white man’s foot. He was promptly knocked down. As it occurred in a public place where a small crowd had gathered to look at base-ball bulletins, seven or eight of the white by-standers in the crowd took a kick and a knock at him. , who arrested the Negro and put him under lock and key—because he got knocked down!—as my father used to say in relating the story. Then, too, the newspapers continued to hold the Negro up to ridicule and whereas he formerly had some of his race on juries, they were now excluded.10 95

“You can imagine that it was getting very uncomfortable for the Negroes in the South about that time. Many of them left for the North and West. Quite a number went to Africa—and Bishop Smith of the African Methodist Church induced many to go to Hayti. Vast tracts of land in the Southwestern part of the United States were opened up to the cultivation of cotton by a national system of irrigation, and the Government employed Negroes on these improvements and also in the cultivation of the plant itself, after the irrigation system was perfected.”
  

“I still retained some confused recollection of Edward as he was ten years ago — a tall, wiry, raw youth; now, as I rose from my seat and turned towards the library door, I saw a fine-looking and powerful man, light-complexioned, well-made, and of athletic proportions; the first glance made me aware of an air of promptitude and sharpness, shown as well in his movements as in his port, his eye, and the general expression of his face. He greeted me with brevity Wine Education, and, in the moment of shaking hands, scanned me from head to foot; he took his seat in the morocco covered arm-chair, and motioned me to another sent.

“‘I expected you would have called at the counting-house in the Close,’ said he; and his voice, I noticed, had an abrupt accent, probably habitual to him; he spoke also with a guttural northern tone, which sounded harsh in my ears, accustomed to the silvery utterance of the South.

“‘The landlord of the inn, where the coach stopped, directed me here,’ said I. ‘I doubted at first the accuracy of his information, not being aware that you had such a residence as this.’

“‘Oh, it is all right!’ he replied hong kong serviced apartment harbour view, ‘only I was kept half an hour behind time, waiting for you — that is all. I thought you must be coming by the eight o’clock coach.’

“I expressed regret that he had had to wait; he made no answer, but stirred the fire, as if to cover a movement of impatience; then he scanned me again.

“I felt an inward satisfaction that I had not, in the first moment of meeting, betrayed any warmth, any enthusiasm; that I had saluted this man with a quiet and steady phlegm.

“‘Have you quite broken with Tynedale and Seacombe?’ he asked hastily.

“‘ with them; my refusal of their proposals will, I fancy, operate as a barrier against all future intercourse.’

“‘Why,’ said he sage ERP, ‘I may as well remind you at the very outset of our connection, that “no man can serve two masters.” Acquaintance with Lord Tynedale will be incompatible with assistance from me.’ There was a kind of gratuitous menace in his eye as he looked at me in finishing this observation.

“Feeling no disposition to reply to him, I contented myself with an inward speculation on the differences which exist in the constitution of men’s minds. I do not know what inference Mr. Crimsworth drew from my silence — whether he considered it a symptom of contumacity or an evidence of my being cowed by his peremptory manner. After a long and hard stare at me, he rose sharply from his seat.
  

And on the other hand what means the phrase ‘very complex’? I have already given one solution, but there are others. Complex causes we have said produce a blend more and more intimate, but after how long a time will this blend satisfy us? When will it have accumulated sufficient complexity? When shall we have sufficiently shuffled the cards? If we mix two powders, one blue, the other white, there comes a moment when the tint of the mixture seems to us uniform because of the feebleness of our senses; it will be uniform for the presbyte, forced to gaze from afar, before it will be so for the myope. And when it has become uniform for all eyes, we still could push back the limit by the use of instruments. There is no chance for any man ever to discern the infinite variety which, if the kinetic theory is true, hides under the uniform appearance of a gas. And yet if we accept Gouy’s ideas on the Brownian movement, does not the microscope seem on the point of showing us something analogous Master of Science in Statistics?

This new criterion is therefore relative like the first; and if it retains an objective character, it is because all men have approximately the same senses, the power of their instruments is limited, and besides they use them only exceptionally.
9

It is just the same in the moral sciences and particularly in history. The historian is obliged to make a choice among the events of the epoch he studies; he recounts only those which seem to him the most important. He therefore contents himself with relating the most momentous events of the sixteenth century, for example, as likewise the most remarkable facts of the seventeenth century. If the first suffice to explain the second, we say these conform to the laws of history. But if a great event of the seventeenth century should have for cause a small fact of the sixteenth century which no history reports, which all the world has neglected, then we say this event is due to chance. This word has therefore the same sense as in the physical sciences; it means that slight causes have produced great effects Limited Company in hong kong.

The greatest bit of chance is the birth of a great man. It is only by chance that meeting of two germinal cells, of different sex, containing precisely, each on its side, the mysterious elements whose mutual reaction must produce the genius. One will agree that these elements must be rare and that their meeting is still more rare. How slight a thing it would have required to deflect from its route the carrying spermatozoon. It would have sufficed to deflect it a tenth of a millimeter and Napoleon would not have been born and the destinies of a continent would have been changed. No example can better make us understand the veritable characteristics of chance.

One more word about the paradoxes brought out by the application of the calculus of probabilities to the moral sciences. that no Chamber of Deputies will ever fail to contain a member of the opposition, or at least such an event would be so improbable that we might without fear wager the contrary, and bet a million against a sou.

Condorcet has striven to calculate how many jurors it would require to make a judicial error practically impossible. If we had used the results of this calculation, we should certainly have been exposed to the same disappointments as in betting, on the faith of the calculus, that the opposition would never be without a representative Graduation Dinner.

The laws of chance do not apply to these questions. If justice be not always meted out to accord with the best reasons, it uses less than we think the method of Bridoye. This is perhaps to be regretted, for then the system of Condorcet would shield us from judicial errors.  

“Yn mhlwyf Llangeler, yn Sir Gaerfyrddin, Mai 21ain, 1719, y dechreuodd yspryd yr hwn a barhaodd dros hir amser, i daflu ceryg at rhai oedd yn y maes yno Cheap Serviced Apartments Hong Kong. Dydd Iau y Sulgwyn y dechreuwyd dyrnu, oddeutu wyth y boreu, ac y dechreuodd yntau daflu ceryg. Un o’r dyrnwyr yn gyntaf a welodd y gareg yn disgyn ar y llawr dyrnu. Yr ail gareg a ddisgynodd ar glin morwyn y ty, nes ydoedd clais arni; ac yn mhen ychydig llanwasant y llawr dyrnu [151]a’r twyn oddiamgylch, yr hyn a wnaethant wedi hyny. Y dyrnwyr a roisant heibio eu gwaith, ac a aethant i edrych pwy oedd yn eu taflu hwynt, ond ni allasent weled neb.

“Dydd Gwener,—Y forwyn, pan yn yr ardd, a darawyd dair gwaith. Tarawyd amryw o’r plant, nes iddynt fyned allan o’r ty. Daeth llawer yn nghyd i weled y rhyfeddodau hyn, ac yr oedd pawb ag oedd yn dyfod yn cael gweled y ceryg yn disgyn.

“Dydd Sadwrn,—Tarawyd y forwyn ac un o’r dyrnwyr. Yr oedd rhai ceryg yn chwyrnu, ac megys cleisiau ar amryw o honynt. Y ceryg ni welid nes byddent yn disgyn, a phan godid hwynt byddai eu hol ar y llawr, megys pe byddent yno flwyddyn o’r blaen. Daeth pawl mawr yn groes i’r ffenestr, heb neb gweledig yn dyfod ag ef. Rhai ni chredent nes danfon cenadon i weled, ac i gyrchu rhai ceryg adref i’w tai. Cyfodwyd cyff mawr o bren o’r croch i ben y ty, ac a ddisgynodd mewn man arall Hong Kong Company Formation.

“Dydd Sul,—Daeth llawer iawn yn nghyd i weled, ac amryw o honynt yn tyngu ac yn rhegu, ac yn siarad yn gableddus ac yn ysgafn. Disgynodd ceryg mawrion ar y lloft yn y ty, ond ni welwyd hwynt nes disgynent. Tarawyd bar haiarn allan o’r ffenestr, a phlygwyd un arall fel bach ysdarn; a’r ffenestr a dorwyd yn friwion man. Wedi’r nos daeth ceryg i’r gwelyau, a chloriau’r ffenestri a aethant i’r llofft; a gorfu ar dylwyth y ty gyfodi o’u gwelyau a myned i dy cymydog. Nid oedd ond y ceryg yn llawn yn y ty ac oddiamgylch iddo.

“Nos Fercher,—Llosgwyd yr ysgubor a’r llafur, a llawer o bethau eraill; yr oedd ef bob dydd yn taflu ceryg, ond nid bob awr. Yr oedd weithiau yn taflu mor gynted ag y gellid eu rhifo, a’r rhan fwyaf o honynt yn geryg afon, a rhai o honynt yn chwech pwys neu ragor o bwysau.

“Daeth cymydogion yn nghyd un noswaith i weddio ar Dduw yn y ty, ac ni fu yno fawr o stwr y noson hono. a wnaeth efe, ond o’r diwedd efe a ddarfu ac a beidiodd.”

For the benefit of those who are unable to read Welsh, I give the following translation of the above account:—

In the parish of Llangeler, Carmarthenshire, May 21st., 1719, a spirit, which continued for some time, began to throw stones at those who were in the field. On Thursday in Whitsun week, at eight in the morning, the thrashing began (at a farm) and at the same time he (the spirit) began to throw stones. At first it was one of the men who were thrashing that noticed a stone descending [152]on the thrashing floor. The second stone fell on the leg of the housemaid, wounding her; and after this, very shortly, they filled the thrashing floor and the place around. The men who were thrashing gave up their work Hong Kong Apartment for Rent, and went to see who were throwing them, but could see no one.

Friday.—The servant maid in the garden was struck three times. Several of the children were struck till they went out of the house. A large number of people came together to see these wonders, and all who came were allowed to see the stones descending.