And his heart is so hungry, and his loyalty to God so urgent and so conquering. Jean Valjean has suffered much. Ulysses, buffeted by wars and stormy seas, has had a life of calm as compared with this new hero. Ulysses's battles were from without; Valjean's battles were from within. But, if he has suffered greatly, he has also been greatly blessed. Struggle for goodness against sin is its own reward. We do not give all and get nothing. There are compensations. Recompense of reward pursues goodness, as foam a vessel's track. If Jean Valjean loved Cossette with a passion such as the angels know, if she was his sun and made the spring, there was a sense in which Cossette helped Valjean. There was response, not so much in the return of love as in that he loved her; and his love for her helped him in his dark hours, helped him when he needed help the most, helped him on with God. He needs her to love, as our eyes need the fair flowers and the blue sky; his life was not empty; and God had not left himself without witness in Jean Valjean's life, for he had had his love for Cossette. But he is bereft. Old age springs on him suddenly, as Javert had done in other days. He has, apparently without provocation, passed from strength to decrepitude. Since he sees Cossette no more he has grown gray, stooped, decrepit. There is no morning now, since he does not see Cossette. You have seen him walking to the corner to catch sight of her house; how feeble he is! Another day walking her way, but not so far; and the next, and the next, walking; but the last day he goes scarce beyond his own threshold. And now he cannot go down the stairs; now he is in his own lonely room, alone. He sees death camping in his silent chamber, but feels no fright. No, no; rather Death like a friend's voice from a distant field approaching, called. For sure no gladlier does the stranded wreck Death dawning on him, and the close of all. But Cossette, Cossette! To see her once, just once, only once! To touch her hand-O, that were heaven. But he And the says to his heart, "I shall not touch her hand, and I shall not see her face—no more, no more!" And the little garments he brought her, when he took her from her slavery to the Thenardiers, there they are upon his bed where he can touch them as if they were black tresses of the woman he had loved and lost. The bishop's candlesticks are lit. He is about to die, and writes in his poor, sprawling fashion to Cossette; writes to her. He fronts her always, as the hills front the dawn. He ceases, and sobs like a breaking heart. O, "she is a smile that has passed over me. I shall never see her again!" door dashes open; Marius and Cossette are come. Joy, joy to the old heart! Jean Valjean thinks it is heaven's morning. Marius has discovered that Jean Valjean is not his murderer, but his saviour; that he has, at imminent peril of his life, through the long, oozy quagmire of the sewer, with his giant strength borne him across the city, saved him; and now, too late, Marius began to see in Jean Valjean "a strangely lofty and saddened form," and has come to take this great heart home. But God will do that himself; Jean Valjean is dying. He looks at Cossette as if he would take a look which would endure through eternity; kisses a fold of her garment, and half articulates, "It-is-nothing to die." Then suddenly rises, walks to the wall, brings back a crucifix, lays it near his hand. "The great martyr," he says; fondles Marius and Cossette, sobs to Cossette, "not to see you broke my heart;" croons to himself, "You love me;" puts his hands upon their heads in a caress, saying, "I do not see clearly now;" later he half whispered, "I see a light," and a man and woman are raining kisses on a dead man's hands. And on that blank stone, over a nameless grave in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, let some angel sculptor chisel, "Jean Valjean, Hero." ART. III.-OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO THE AMERICAN NEGRO. THERE could be no more striking instance of what can and what cannot be accomplished by force than that afforded by our civil war with its results. As in the case of all great world movements, be they revolution or evolution, the actors in it only dimly realized its meaning. In these latter days Southern writers would fain establish the preposterous claim that that terrific struggle was caused by a mere difference of opinion concerning "State rights." As if any sane people, least of all the Anglo-Saxon, ever inaugurated such a strife merely to sustain a theory. The North and the world at large have always recognized that slavery was the root of the contest; that it was to save the "peculiar institution" that Southerners fiercely advocated the doctrine of State rights. But it is only within very recent years that we have begun to see that the "war between the States" was the death grapple of two civilizations so utterly antagonistic that their permanent endurance within the bounds of one nation was as impossible as the coexistence of light and darkness. The one was a form of feudalism based upon the old, effete idea of a subject lower class with an upper class of wealth, leisure, refinement, and culture; the other was the civilization of to-day, of which the Anglo-Saxon race is the exponent, based upon Christ's doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man. And, though our flag floated again over a free and united people, the struggle was not over. The sword had only destroyed the outward form of slavery, but the ideas upon which slavery was based still lived. The new civilization which prevailed by force of arms had as its foundation principle the elevation of the masses. One of the problems, therefore, which the war left was the elevation of four millions of people from the lowest deeps of poverty, ignorance, and vice to the heights of nineteenth century civilization; from the incapacity of slaves to the power of American citizens. If this were not successfully accomplished the old medieval civilization, though vanquished by the sword, was conqueror at last. 47-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XV. Nor was this all. Equally essential to final victory was the acceptance by the white people of the South of the new civilization. And this was the most difficult problem of all. The Southern whites are fond of proclaiming that they are the truest Anglo-Saxons in the nation. Possibly, so far as purity of blood is concerned. Likewise, the Jews who crucified Christ were children of Abraham. Yet Paul declared that not the lineal descendants, but those who possessed Abraham's faith, were his real children. The very essence of Anglican liberty is obedience to the rule of the majority. But the Southern white man had so long been used to ruling a subject race with a despotism unlimited and irresponsible that he had all but lost the Anglo-Saxon ideal of free government—a government wherein the masses are elevated and educated and political equality maintained among the citizens. At the time of the war the Southern white man was living in medieval environments, with a subject lower class supporting an upper class in ease and luxury. Freedom of speech and of the press is the safety valve for republican institutions; but to this day freedom of speech on some subjects is not tolerated in the South. Yet, until the South is abreast of the North on these essential principles of our civilization, and until the Southern white man is ready to recognize the negro as a constituent part of the nation on terms of political equality with every other citizen, the negro problem remains the heaviest "white man's burden" in America. So far as the negro is concerned, as much has been accomplished as could reasonably be expected in the time and under the conditions. He has shown eagerness to educate himself and his children, a desire for the better things of life and character, and aptness at learning the various lessons of civilization. It is true we have reached only the thousands, while millions yet remain to be elevated; but the achievements of thousands of the race prove that the race as a whole is capable of as high a degree of civilization as any race. The AngloSaxon ideal of liberty protected by law the negro accepts unquestioningly. With the same amount of education he shows himself as competent to handle the various instruments by which we maintain our political and social fabric as do any other of our native-born citizens. Wendell Phillips's witty aphorisın, "Put an American baby on its feet, and it will immediately say 'Mr. President' and call the next cradle to order,' is as true of the black as of the white American baby. On more than one bloody battlefield the negro has manifested the Anglo-Saxon's indomitable courage. Our chief difficulty is with the other factor of the problem, the Southern white man. If we study the conditions in the South we are forced to the conviction that the prevailing sentiment of the white people has changed very little since they gave up the first desperate determination that slavery should continue to exist in fact, if not in name, and the Kuklux disbanded. In their view the negroes are an inferior race, destined by the Creator for a position of subordination to the white race. This opinion could do little harm if the holders acted consistently with their belief. If essentially inferior to the white race no effort is necessary to keep the negro in a subordinate position. On the contrary, no effort could keep him anywhere else. But the Southern white man feels it incumbent upon him to assist Providence in maintaining this equilibrium of the races. By an unnatural separation of the races most humiliating to colored people of spirit, by contemptuous treatment of those negroes especially who are a living contradiction to the Southern view, he strives to hold the negroes in their "sphere" as menials. In the capacity of a servant no objections are made to the negro's presence anywhere in closest proximity to the white man. As valet or nurse he may ride at pleasure in a Pullman sleeper; but the appearance of a cultured black lady or gentleman as a passenger in a first-class car is the signal for insulting looks and words and for angry demands for " separate accommodations." The black man may have carried off the honors of his class in a leading Northern university, but all public entertainments, concerts, and lectures are closed to him in the South, except on the humiliating terms of taking, usually by a back alley entrance, an undesirable seat in the topmost gallery. He is similarly excluded even from general religious gatherings, except in the case of national or world organizations in which the sentiment of members not resident in the South compels a change. |