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One afternoon he took Nelly and Mrs. Johns away forward, hastening them a little by the hot, baked air of the smokestacks; then lingering awhile and leaning over the rail, to see life upon the deck below-a group of the uniformed officers conversing with the gentle voice and easy gesture of men of the drawing-room; the cook's boy with bare flying hair and flapping sabots, skating out of one door and into another, with a pan of smoking beans; a poor stoker, just up from the furnaces, rubbing the thick, black sweat from his brow with the back of his arm, his look fixed and brooding, as if his life had been wronged of something, he knew not what; then under the airy bridge where an officer is always walking to and fro, and never a passenger, not even Fred,-ventures. At last, they reached the forecastle deck. I knew it had slight protection for them on any side, and feeling a little anxious, soon added myself to the party. The two ladies stood in the middle of the deck, pressing close to each other, arm hugging arm, looking out shrinkingly upon the boundless, mighty expanse. I drew them to a seat on the big anchor, at one side. Except the look-out, who stood opposite, motionless as a stanchion, we were quite alone. Fred went to the point of the prow, leaning over to see the rush of waters below, or, standing erect and sweeping the horizon, his young graceful figure was marked clearly upon the blue sky. His every movement was watched by Nelly-sometimes, I thought, with just a little tender fear, sometimes with a look which, even to my dull eyes, seemed to say, He's a handsome fellow and he loves

me.

He called to us to come and see the prow open its swift way through the waves. I had seen that sight fifty times already. Mrs. Johns was afraid of dizziness, but told Nelly to go. Fred took her hand in his, and led her to the front, where, still hand in hand, they gazed together away down at the swirls of silver-green that slide aside to left and right; at the crests of foam that wreathe themselves away beneath the surface like the white limbs of a descending wraith; at the graceful sheaves that now and then leap up before the prow and fling off their million glittering grains; at the steady, headlong rush of waters under all this, which works its own will upon the brain, like the fascination of a great rapid. In a little while Fred brought

her back to her seat on the anchor beside us, and took a semi-horizontal position for himself, with elbow under him, at her feet.

We were all silent. Not a sound broke upon our reveries, none from the grating screw, no throb from the engine, no voices of men,—not a sound but the falling swash of waves against the prow. Not a sail nor a wreath of steamer's smoke was visible around the whole horizon. The primæval ocean lay before us,-joyous now, but with a something stern, almost awful, in its joy, as a god of Eschylus might smile,-and into his presence we felt ourselves hastening as with the still, resistless pressure of a Fate. The feeling made one look back instinctively upon the ship, as if to scan the face of the dark, mighty power that bore us on. Mrs. Johns broke our silence with the Voice in the Ancient Mariner

What makes that ship drive on so fast, Without or wave or wind?

Fred caught the verse-he knew the poem by heart-and answered:

The air is cut away before,

And closes from behind.

"That must mean the steam cylinder," I said. "Poetry is prophecy, you know." "Oh, Professor!" cried Nell.

"Well, it's just so." said Fred. "I never thought of it before."

Then we journeyed back to our friends upon the after-deck, and betook ourselves to reading or lounging, or chat with stranger passengers or to whatever took the whim.

Our two young people, as they seemed to grow more and more happy in each other's society, seemed to grow more and more content with that alone. Nelly's little matron almost lost sight of her during the hours of afternoon, but as the stern of the ship was a favorite haunt of my own in the quiet weather, I learned unwittingly a little of the progress of affairs with the two, who selected the same unfrequented spot. Sometimes they sat reading in silence their pleasant books, and sharing some bright passage with each other; sometimes, watching the wonderful motion of the sea-gulls and observing the soft, exquisite. tone and symmetry of their colors; sometimes their eyes traced back the long, softly shining path which the vessel left behind it, stretching far as they could gaze, and along which memories glided homeward.

One day, after they had left their place for
a brisk walk along the deck, and I was
gathering up the shawl and chess-board
and camp-stool to take below for them, I
found, among half a dozen novels from the
ship's locker, the half of an old Atlantic
Magazine-the half that held a charming
little love-dream of a poem.
It was what
Fred had just been reading to Nelly, he
read with an exceeding taste, and he had
marked the last verse, doubtless for her
own eyes and heart to read after him; and
I am sure her heart had read it after him, as
a holy response; for there grew, in a day, so
much of the woman upon the girl, in her
face and ways; and besides, after she had
deposited her confidences with Mrs. Johns,

that judicious woman transferred the deposits promptly to myself for safe-keeping. The betrothal ring awaited only parental consent and an order to the artiste in the Rue de la Paix.

At Havre, our little group of the saloon parted, but with promises to meet again. The sweethearts started at once for Paris in company with Nelly's friends, who had met her on the wharf, and with the authoress also, who was to stop at Rouen, to visit the cathedral. Mrs. Johns and myself remained a day or two in Havre, to rest our selves at the fresh, well-kept Frascati, and to visit the fine aquarium-an arrangement which we benevolently commend to everybody else.

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THE CO-EDUCATION OF THE WHITE AND COLORED RACES. AN Act of Congress requiring the South poles of all magnets to attract each other, would not be a whit more absurd than one requiring education to be conducted on a race-mixture in the late slave states. Will politicians never learn that social laws are laws of nature, and hence invariable and inflexible, as well as physical laws? "Civil Rights," in any proper sense of the phrase, being conventional, may be made or unmade by arbitrary power; but natural laws being inherent and divine, can be controlled only by being obeyed. Power may destroy slavery, but it cannot destroy the social inequality which attended slavery, and which was founded not only upon an inequality of condition but upon subjective differences equally great. These subjective differences are not simply the class differences in moral, intellectual, and social culture, which are commonly seen where slavery exists, and which are very serious, as will presently be shown. Masters and slaves might be equal in those respects; indeed the slaves might possibly be superior, and yet a great psychological difference would still exist, which would place the two classes widely apart. respective peculiarities of the two classes form a curious subject of study. whether one studies the philosophy of the facts, or the facts without their philosophy, he is forced to see that the widest social abyss known among men is that created by

slavery, that this abyss yawns for generations after the repelling force has ceased to act, and that it can be filled only by the disintegrating work of time.

The

But

A difference of race widens the chasm, but it is by no means essential to it. Ishmael and Isaac were of the same race, yet their posterity have been mutually estranged for 4,000 years. "The son of the bond woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman," is a natural law divinely announced, and it covers every form of inheritance. Could any possible circumstance enable society to forget the chains or disregard the collar-marks of servitude, the circumstances of various periods and particularly of the post-Augustan age of Rome would have sufficed. For while the masters gave themselves to sensuality, they turned over education, business, and even the fine arts to their slaves. With an eye to profit, the special talents of slaves were cultivated to the highest degree, and often brought their masters very large hire. Cassagnac tells us that Lucius Appulius, an eminent grammarian, brought his owner 40,000 sesterces per annum-about sixteen hundred dollars! Many of the most eminent poets, philologists, authors, orators, rhetoricians, musicians, artists and teachers, were slaves. Plutarch and Xenophon testify throughout Greece and Italy education was entirely in the hands of slaves.

And

Mommsen tells us that the leading branches of business, even custom-houses, banks and counting houses, were largely carried on by slaves.

With this moral and intellectual superiority of the slaves over their masters, existed in most cases identity of race, and prevailed the leveling doctrines of Christianity. Philemon the master, and Onesimus the slave, became brothers in Christ. The rights of man were boldly asserted, and so generally accepted as to occasion an amount of voluntary manumission such as has never been known in any other age, and as really to destroy the prevalence of slavery. Never, never in all history were circumstances so favorable as then for the extinguishment of the odium of slavery, and for the social recognition of freed

men!

But was it so ? Far from it. While in slavery, and as long as the fact of an enslaved ancestry was remembered, the slaves and their posterity were denied social equality, whatever eminence individuals might have reached. Although Æsop was called the preceptor of Greece; Terence, the most elegant writer of Italy; Plato, the profoundest of philosophers; Plautus, Phædras and Horace, immorta! poets: yet all being slaves, or the sons of slaves, they felt the brand deeply. Plato himself flung at his own brethren those verses of Homer which declare that a slave has but half a human soul: " and Horace cast into the face of his fellow-sufferers the sneer"Money cannot change the race!" Long after the slaves had slipped their collars, "their necks remained with the hair rubbed off, like the dog in the fable." Diocletian became emperor, but his contemporaries hurled in his teeth-"You were a slave!" and so to emperor Pertinax they said "Your father was a freedman!"

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While a few freedmen, by their superiority and success, enforced a limited social recognition in the higher circles, the great mass of them were denied any standing whatsoever, and if Cassagnac is to be believed, they were at all periods forced, like lepers, to live apart from the rest of mankind, and became the great feeders, as they had been the founders, of the detested proletariat, whose filthy stream has defiled and burdened European society ever since. Undoubtedly this treatment of ancient freedmen was a blunder and a wrong, from the effects of which European nations have been suffering ever since, and are suffering

to-day, in the forms of pauperism, crime, and communistic rebellions. And a similar course toward the freedman of America would produce similar results. But these facts are mentioned not to be adjudged, but to be considered as illustrations of the deep, inherent and universal social repugnance existing between the free-born and free-made classes of society and similar illustrations might be drawn from every nation where these two classes have existed.

And the fact should be noted that in our day there are circumstances calculated to aggravate this repugnance. Prominent among these is the difference in race. With some small exceptions, the Africans are lowest in the scale of races, while the white Americans rank with the highest ; and these Africans are everywhere thought of as the great slave-race of the earth. Wheresoever they are found away from Africa, they are either slaves or the children of slaves, and in their own land they enslave and sell one another as a prominent occupation. So that in this country the freedman carries in his face the history of his family, and the fact of his connection with a race whose history for 2,000 years is unrelieved by a single heroic passage, or even by an average degree of virtue, ability, or attainment of any sort. Then add to this the fact of recent emancipation, and that under the violence of a long and bitter war, which was occasioned by the negro; and then to all, add the facts of reconstruction and the political scourging under which many sections of the South are now suffering; and altogether we have almost every conceivable reason to expect a most aggravated case of social aversion on the part of the whites toward the colored races in our Southern States.

Much need not be said as to the social relations of the two races in the Northern States. Several generations having passed since the abolition of slavery in those States, there would naturally be an abatement of the feelings described above; and the recent contest between the sections, while widening this social gulf at the South, tended to lessen it at the North. In order to stimulate opposition to slavery, it was thought proper to exaggerate the doctrines of human liberty, equality and fraternity, to such an extent, that the negro became the pet of a large class of the people, and the leveling influence of these sentiments was felt extensively. This tendency

progressed the more readily, because the negro was not recognized as a power in Northern society. He was in nobody's way. He competed for nothing, formed no combinations, and controlled no state or city. But in spite of all this, the social repugnance between the races has not been obliterated anywhere, and is so strong even in the city of New York, that the negro children on their way to school are (or until very lately were) stoned in the streets by the white boys; and they could no more be mixed in its public schools than they could in the schools of Richmond. In Boston the mixture is barely tolerated, and the schools wherein it practically exists are avoided by large classes of the people. And as for promiscuous social intercourse, it is to be found nowhere on the conti

nent.

It was no part of the plan of this paper to discuss the propriety of the aversion which the whites feel to intimate association with the blacks. But as was intimated in the beginning, it is not simply a matter of prejudice, of pride, or of taste. If all these could be overcome, there is a moral reason which of itself prevents coeducation everywhere that negroes are numerous. They move on a far lower moral plane than the whites, as a class. Without going into particulars, it is enough to say that the average character and habits of these people render it highly proper in the whites to refuse to associate their children with them in the intimate relations of a school. It is only in kindness to an amiable people, that I refrain from giving revolting details.

It is well known that the promiscuous association of moral as well as social grades of children, constitutes the most objectionable feature in the public school idea, and school boards are compelled to shape their districts, particularly in cities, so as to separate the fouler classes as far as practicable from the more decent: but even under the best arrangements, it has been found impossible to make the public school system anywhere acceptable to all the people in any community. In the late slave states difficulties of this sort are peculiarly troublesome because of the influence of slavery in creating wide social differences, which at best disincline an influential part of the Southern people to support any general school system. If to this be added well founded moral objections, to say nothing of physical peculiarities, the

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attempt to mix the races, which might otherwise be considered vain and foolish, should be regarded as base and malicious. While it is true that public schools may possibly be made propagating houses for advanced social and political ideas, it is also true that just so far as they are so used, they are perverted and weakened, and may readily, and, in some cases, properly be destroyed by the operation. The object of schools is to instruct the children in certain branches of knowledge, and all school arrangements should be designed so as to contribute to this special result, and should be flexible so that they may be adjusted according to local circumstances. It is well known to school authorities that there are many established doctrines in education which cannot be carried out in all places. Theoretically, for example, all schools should be graded, but even where the numbers are sufficient for a graded organization, the previous habits of the people may render the scheme inoperative. In most communities school economy is greatly promoted by the teaching of boys and girls together: but if the local sentiment is so set against co-education of the sexes that they will not allow their children to attend a school where it is practised, it must not be attempted, except in a very cautious and gradual way. And yet there are always zealots clamoring for the enforcement of sound theories irrespective of circumstances.

No doubt we shall soon have a war against the separation of the sexes in education. We already hear that such separation is an insult to the understanding and feelings of the female sex, just as we hear that it is an insult to the negroes to separate them from the whites: the hobbyists not seeing that the champions of the male sex might reverse the statement, just as the champions of the white race might do. The mere fact of separation in either case means nothing but common sense school economy, which employs the most effective methods of educating the people of both sexes and of both races; just as railroad contractors put Corkonians and Fardowners on different parts of the work, because if put together they bruise each other, instead of building the railroad.

And just here we see in a moment the absurdity of the doctrine that the separation of races in education is an infringement of the civil rights of either racefor if it infringes upon the rights of either,

it does so on the rights of both equally. To admit such an idea is to break down all the distinctive arrangements of school economy. It would pronounce unlawful, not only the refusal to admit boys into a girls' school, and vice versa, but also the gradation of pupils according to advancement, and the refusal to admit or retain pupils who do not comply with the regulations. For the matter of separate schools for the races does not differ essentially from other school regulations intended to facilitate the educational object aimed at.

With far less reason during the late war there were colored regiments, and even German, Irish and Scotch regiments. In truth, when any great object is earnestly sought, there is none of this prating about liberty and equality. Men are classified to facilitate the result. Prejudice is a power which wise men utilize, and never unnecessarily offend. The English managed the Sepoy regiments until they ordered the men to bite the greasy cartridges, but then the Sepoys rebelled, and enormous mischief followed a wholly unnecessary disregard of superstitious prejudices.

This much the negroes may justly claim, -and that is enough, that the public schools provided for them shall be equal in all respects to those provided for the whites. In order that these separate schools may be maintained there must be incurred a heavy extra expense, which will be borne chiefly by the whites; and as long as the whites are willing to do this, it is sufficient evidence that the co-education of the races is impracticable.

What then would be the practical result, as respects education, of the so-called Civil Rights' Bill, as originally introduced into Congress by Gen. Butler? Would it secure the co-education of the races? Impossible ! Would education be facilitated in any way? It would inevitably be destroyed, as a public affair. Every State in the Union now has a school system for both races supported at public expense. How long would such a school system be maintained in the fifteen ex-Slave States? Just as long as would be required to go through the forms of law needed to destroy it! and no longer, except in those wretched states where the negroes and their allies dominate over the property therein. In those States some sort of system would be maintained for the benefit of the negroes, or at least money would ostensibly be raised for the purpose. As to this being

the practical result, there is no difference of opinion among men acquainted with the state of the case in these states. Everybody knows it, black and white; and, therefore, the blacks do not desire mixed schools, and the real friends of universal education do not desire it whatever may be their political theories. There are now more than a million and a half of children, white and black, in the public schools of the fifteen ex-Slave States. What would be the subsequent reputation of any statesman who would aid in passing a law, the only practical effect of which would be to turn these school children out of doors?

But what of the great future? Are we forever to go on thus? There is no need for us to solve social and economical problems for unborn generations. We have our hands full with the present. Do not let us spoil our work from the fear of setting bad precedents. Our children will be sufficiently progressive. The prejudices which disturb us now will run their natural course, and, so far as they are merely prejudices, will end. The tidal wave which may be omnipotent in its pride, sinks exhausted at last on the bosom of the deep. Unquestionably the tendency of mankind is toward the obliteration of race-distinctions, and it is seen in the brightest centers of civilization, as well as among the lately secluded peoples of the East. Some of the most cultivated Caucasians have declared their preference for a mottled society--or as an eloquent orator expressed it, for “ a rainbow of colors on the social sky." And in the most polished courts of Europe, not only has the Turk, the Japanese, the Chinaman and the Persian received the highest social recognition, but the same has been accorded to the despised African.

Hence, in arguing for the policy advocated in this paper, it is not done in ignorance of the tendencies of the race at large, or with any vain expectation that we can anchor here. Still less is there a disposition to deny to the negro equality before the law, or equal means of improvement with the whites. Nor is there a disposition to disparage the intellect of the negro, or to discourage him in his aspirations. Those who have chosen to trace back the Ethiopian race into the remote past, know that it too has had its heroic age; in which it led the civilization of the world. And those who have studied the remote causes out of which have grown the diversities in the human race, and the influences which

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