Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1899-03-15
PRESENT-DAY THOUGHTS.
BY @. aKosvENoR DAVE.

The one who, the very night this article
is written, lies at deaths door, Kipling,
has in two years uttered two great notes
that have thrilled the world of English
sneakers. First his "Recessional', written
at the time of the Queens diamond ju-
bilee. pervaded our whole literature in
less than month. 1t raised the thoughts
of those whom strong words could raise
far above turmoil and materialsm, into
the realm where we saw that power
brought with 1t unavoidable RESPONSE
bility.
Now again confusion OF thought and
doubt of destiny are swept aside like cob
webs by his new poem, The White Mans
Burden Why do we so heartily app
prove? Because the poet with the stroke
of pen condenses into few lines the ex-
perience OF an age and the convictions OF
million.
The white mans burden is laid on the
white mans shoulders. He may rave and
he may tear, but the bands OF Almighty
God hold fast and the burden is still there
to be carried till the end. Errors are made
down here below but not up there where
one stitch who seeth the end from the
beginning. The white mans burden is
laid on the white mans shoulders be-
cause he is able to bear it and because the
strong, in the economy OF moral life, must
carry the burdens of the weak.
We have the burden here among us and
we cannot be rid OF tive either must
carry it or drop defeated in our tracks.
The latter, however, we dare not, cannot
do; so perforce the burden is still ours.
One OF our United States senator's said as
recently as February "a; The negro is
by nature and by every instinct of his
soul loafer. The colored people are a
happy go-lucky, immoral untruthtu I'M
reliable race. You cannot alter what
God has made, and though this or that
negro may be decent snan, or an honest
man, yet the tiger is loosened in white
mans bosom without regard to eonse
quences, when the two races come in con-
tact" This is example of the sort of
rearing and pitching that only makes the
burden chaie little more than before
Let US calmly look at the burden and
not attempt to roll it off into ditch, for
that is futile, nor charge its bad aspects
upon God, for that's foolish. We brought
the eolored people here against their will;
with the utmost cruelty they were
snatched from home and native land,
crowded ON slave ships in conditions that
were indescribablt, and then sold and
bought like cattle Then for two hundred
years or they We're held in bondage
much of il probably kind and thoughtful,
but bondage nevertheless. Then without
any cultivation or thrift among them, or
the shadow of a training for citizenship,
we threw them out into the struggle of
life and of politics. Now after genera
ton is passed we look for good crop
from field wherein we have bestowed no
care and, like this senator, would lay the
blame of upon that convenient excuse for
failures, Almighty God.
The negro is happy o-lucky, and it is
well that he is, or many home would
have mourned because of him. He is I'M
moraI-not because he means to be, but
because he is simply at the stage of ami
NAL existence that the white man, as
whole, passed ages ago. He is untruthful
because lying was his safeguard, and steal
ing his way to luxury back in those days
when he was owned. He is unreliab BILE,
because he has no ancestral experience to
show him that trust orthiness is good.
He is idle because his wants are very
simple, and wants-the complicated wants
of civilization-enter much more largely
into the white mans industry than he
stops to consider.
He is what he is because generation of
wasted opportunities is not enough to
counteract ages of gross existence in
Africa, and two hundred years Of ignorant
slavery in America.
He is what he is because even his we'll
meaning friends have been his actual en-
emies in trying to force the stone of clas
steal education down his throat while his
real need was the bread of manual train
ing.
He is what he is because of the hypoc-
risy of politics that will make much of
him once year, and eXaggerate in his