Death is a Dialogue between, The Spirit and the Dust. Fame is a fickle food Upon a shifting plate. Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need. The distant strains of triumph Break agonized and clear.
Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.
The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization. An American, a Negro . . .