Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition, Marietta Holley [classic english novels txt] 📗

The big normal school building in Manila is handsome enough for any American city, and the smaller district and industrial schools are doing jest as good work. Our Government sent five hundred and forty teachers there in 1901, and now we have about seven hundred there. I took comfort in seein' the great work they have done, as well as the church and private schools, and how well they're learning and getting along.

Anyone could spend five weeks at least jest at the Philippine display, and find abundance to interest 'em all the time in the educational, art, manufacturing, horticultural, agricultural and other displays, but we hadn't no five weeks to spend, so we had to move on, but I felt proud enough to see what my revered Uncle Sam had done and wuz doing.

Truly he took a big job on his hands to take care of such an immense family, and differin' so widely in cultivation, temperament and clothes, to lead the ignorant ones into civilization and keep peace in the family and among his own folks.

He'll have as hard work to do it as that widower I hearn on who had three or four children of his own, and married a widow who also had a number, and then they had several, and one day she came callin' to her husband, "Come quick! come quick! Your children and my children are fightin' with our children."

But Uncle Sam will be on hand, he'll wade right in with a birch gad or a spellin' book, jest which he thinks they need most at the time, and settle the differences all right, and I believe it will be a star in his crown in time to come: turning the savages and cannibals that inhabit part of these new possessions into good American citizens.

I don't spoze I shall see the day when this shall fully come to pass, and mebby the babies of to-day will be great-grandpas before it takes place, but it will be, I believe, and so duz Josiah.

Yes, he's doin' a good job by his step-children, I guess they would be called that seein' he stepped in when they wuz poor and oppressed and took 'em under his care.

I honor him for it, but wish he would do as well by his steal children, the dark complexioned ones stole away from their own land to be slaves and drudges for his white children.

He'll mebby tell me they wuz ignorant and degraded and wuz better off here than in their own land, but I'll say back to him, "Samuel, Josiah and I would probable be in a better house and more high-toned society if some king or other should steal us and carry us away from our humble farm to their palace. But do you spoze we would enjoy ourselves as well? No indeed!"

And 'tennyrate they're here, the problem that lays so heavy on the Southern and Northern heart and conscience and the riddle gits harder and harder to solve. The lurid blaze of livin' torches makes bloody blindness in the eyes of them that look on and light them fires. The disgraceful glare flames out, shamin' you in the eyes of the world, and streams up to the pityin' heavens askin' for justice.

Mebby you'll tell me you don't see how you can help it, but Samuel, you must try, for though there are here and there oasises in the gloom lighted up by education and inteligence still there remains the great multitude of your steel children that you ort to help, you ort to do as well by them settin' in long rows right on your very doorstep as you're doin' for them six thousand milds off. Sinners must be punished by law, else what is law made for? Order must be kep', the helpless protected, but you know, Samuel, that if some of the disgraceful seens that are bein' enacted here right under your dear old nose took place amongst your adopted Philippine children or even amongst your protejays in Turkey or China you would send out a warship to once. I am sorry for you, Samuel, and think the world on you, but faithful are the woonds of a friend; you must hear the truth once in awhile or who knows what would become on you, you might puff up with proud flesh and have to have an operation, and I guess you will anyway before you git through with this problem.

I presoom you want me to advise you what to do, only bein' a man you hain't really wanted to come out and ask me. Josiah acts jest like that lots of times.

So I'll say to you, I honor you, Samuel, for what you're doin' for these foreign children, but I want you to do jest as much to home. I want you to send teachers and found schools at your own expense; you're four handed and able to do it. And Id'no but you had better buy land in their own home you stole them from, buy a small farm for each one that wants to go. Travelers say that in the Valley of the Nile, a country with similar climate and soil to the south land where they wuz born, is an unoccupied place big enough for each one to have a small farm of their own. I want you, Samuel, to buy this land for 'em, take 'em back there at your own expense, all that want to go. There are plenty of the young and enterprising who would go full of the hope of foundin' a new republic for their own race, where they can expand and grow strong away from parlyzing influence of racial and social hatred.

There would be lots of 'em who wouldn't want to go, and why can't you, Samuel, I'd say, buy them a little home here, for instance, on the vast unoccupied area of Florida? Let 'em have the hull state if necessary; let each family have their little piece of land, and then make 'em work it; send teachers, found schools, teach 'em to be self sustaining and self respecting.

Samuel would probable sass me back and say, You can't teach a nigger to respect himself and stand upright.

And I'd say, "'Tain't so, Sam, but if it wuz, centuries have been spent by the white race in teachin' this people to be dependent and helpless, to not think for themselves, to lean entirely on the judgment and justice of the white people (weak reeds to lean on anon or oftener)."

And then I'd say, "Samuel, you did a foolish thing after the Civil war, you did it with the best of motives, and you needn't be skairt, I hain't goin' to scold you for it, but it wuz jest like turnin' a company of babies out into the world and tellin' 'em they wuz jest as tall and inteligent as their pas and mas and they must go on and take care of themselves, and with their utter lack of all knowledge and strength take an equal part in public affairs. How could these babies do it, Samuel, I would say. But you wuz gropin' along most blind in them dark days, and you did the best you knowed how to then. But when you see you've made a mis-step you must draw your foot back and start off agin jest like a elephant crossin' a weak bridge, I've seen 'em go down into the water and wade ruther than resk it. You may have to wade through deep waters to fix it all right, but that would be better than to fall through a weak bridge and break your neck.

"It is because I think so much on you, Samuel, that I talk so plain to you, for I don't want you to git the name Miss Eben Simmons got. She jest spent her hull mind and income on foreign missions and let her own children go so dirty and ragged they wuz a disgrace to Jonesville. I want you and Miss Simmons to not scrimp in your foreign charities but begin to home and make your own dependent ones comfortable."

I presume I could convince him if I had time enough, but we are busy creeters, Samuel and I, both on us, and Id'no as he'd have time to argy back and forth with me, but it would be well for him if he did, men must have wimmen advise 'em if they ever expect to amount to anything.

But to resoom forwards. These thoughts wuz runnin' through my head as we wended our way around, it did my soul good, as I said, to see the progress these Filipinos are makin', and to meditate on the fact how enterprisin' Uncle Samuel is when he sets out. Why jest think on't, he's taught them Filipinos more English in four years than the Spaniards taught 'em their language in the four hundred years they took care on 'em.

I wuz so proud and happy as I thought on't that I stepped considerable high as I walked along, and I hearn a profane bystander say (wicked creeter to think on't),

"That woman has took too much stimulant."

And Josiah sez, "What ails you, Samantha? You walk as if you wuz follerin' a band of music."

And I wuz, it wuz the music of the Future that sounds out in my ears anon or oftener, sweet inspirin' strains that even Josiah can't hear if his head lays on the same piller.

It sings of an ignorant, oppressed race changed into an enlightened prosperous one, this great work done by our own country, this song comes floatin' into my ears over the wide Pacific. And another louder strain comes from nigher by made tender and pathetic by years of oppression and suppressed suffering that could find expression in no other way than this heart searching pathos. And blending with it, ringing over and above it, triumphant happy echoes telling of real freedom of mind and conscience, the true liberty.

CHAPTER XV.

Well, Blandina wanted to go to the Anthropological Buildin'. She said Professor Todd had recommended it. I should knowed he would choose that spot in preference to any other. I hadn't a idee what it meant, but didn't feel obleeged to tell her so, but spozed it wuz sunthin' hard to tackle, judgin' from the name, but told her I wuz willin' to go to see it or her or him, not knowin' which it would turn out to be. But come to find out it wuz everything relatin' to the history of man, and spozed that wuz one reason why Blandina wuz interested in it.

It wuz a monstrous big buildin', and in it and outside on't wuz exhibits from all the different countries of the world, showin' the difference in the races of mankind, their difference through all the ages, anatomy, industries, customs, education, different religious rites, games, books and pictures, maps illustrating mankind and his works, etc., and I could fill a dozen pages with etcs., and not half exhaust the contents of the immense buildin'.

Blandina wuz in her glory here, she wuz studyin' in full magesty the history of her idol, man. But as I told her, I spozed the term, man, included woman also. But she looked dubersome, she didn't like the idee I could see, and Josiah didn't. But I knowed I wuz right, and I guess Molly thought so too.

This is the most complete gathering of the world's people and races that has ever been got together, and includes different types, from the smallest pigmies from Central Africa to the Patagonian giants. Josiah wuz delighted to learn of the strength of these pigmies, how they kill elephants and rhinocerhorses, and sez he, "I tell you, Samantha, it hain't size that counts, it is most always the smallest men that are the smartest, looked at Napoleon and me."

But I whispered to him to keep still, for he wuz attractin' attention, and I led the way to see the giants. But he looked coldly on 'em, and sez he:

"They hain't thought much on, it speaks about their mean statter in the guide books."

But I thought to myself how handy it would be to have one on 'em in the neighborhood to rent out by the day to whitewash overhead or shingle the barn; they wouldn't even have to git up in a chair, and Id'no but they could lay a chimbly standin' on the ground; they wuz immense.

And there wuz displays of the works and habits and native surroundin's of the lowest types from the beginnin' of the stun age up to the