The times. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1890-1903, 1892-10-02
---------------------
LOW LIE ABOVE STAIRS.

A kltchenful of darkies in old times
was very far from being an unmxed
evil. Their influence for good was very
positive. AS substratum Of society
they might be compared to the fresh
green grass, the clover and other pretty
things that cover the surface of the earth
and make lowliness agreeable, just as
the overhanging armament makes the
highest things familiar. Our friends and
companions and servants occupied the
place that God made them for. and did
it gracefully. They taught us cheerful
contentment with our lot; patience anna
bility and meekness under provocation,
and we were pleased with their happiness
and cherished their merry-makings as
household institutions.
They served us still another excellent
purpose. Their mimic life helped to
eliminate our follies. They admired our
pOmps and vanities, and reproduced high
life below stairs. And their burlesques
and caricatures made them ridicu-
lous-shOwed them in puriS natu-
ralibus.' They gave us our full
Of fnagnifcence and grandeur. Jim and
Hezekiah and Pompey, with high hats
and long-tailed coats, accompanying Mar
tina Ann and Mary Jane and Rose,
dressed to kill''-not decollete, though
Frenchy-to big baptizing or funeral,
helped us to regard the vain pomp and
glory of the world with pleased, not
harsh philosophy. We did not hate them,
ike Cardinal Woolsey, but were amused
with them. But we quietly concluded
that that sort Of thing did not become
ladies and gentlemen; rather those people
that could not be hurt by them that
played with them. And so the white
folks did not Gress anything like as fine
as the darkies and The half-strainers.
We learned TO look upon shows and SEN
sations as a little suspicious. Our peo-
pie, in fact, in their aversion to these
absurdities have erred on the other side.
A kind providence taught us our lessons,
as the Lacedaemonians very barbariously
are said to have taught their children,
making their slaves drunk that their own
young ones might see the disgust of in
ebriety and avoid it,
The hints and suggestions OF virtue,
the voices of nature, the images of true
life, the key-notes of honesty that we
may get from a lowly life are of infinite
consequence. The lowliest life that was
ever led on earth gave keynote to hui
mainly that promises divine and univer-
sal harmony.
But lowly life is one thing, and low
life is quite another. The old serpent is
no respecter of persons or social levels.
He is now described as toad breathing
vice into the ear of the fairest of women;
now the brilliant hero of Paradise Lost.
And his familiar intercourse and fellow
ship make princes and thieves, royal
gamblers and common cheats, all one
''all of one nature, of one substance
bred. And it is his part not to make the
simple graces of humble people accepta-
BILE TO the great, not to make the follies
of high life odious by an exhibition of
them in their native ugliness, but by
making the common vices Of the vicious
fashionable to enact low life above stairs.
Not only the dime novel and the sensa-
tional drama that, with their glistening,
glowing, daredevil heroes and herolnes,
make vice and wickedness attractive.
murder and robbery splendid accomplish