Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures | Page 7

do not know, the words of which I
cannot recall except a line here and there, hence I take the liberty to

supply the missing lines and revise the verses to express my feelings
for the slave mammy of my childhood.
"She was only a dear old darkey, In a cabin far away, Down in the
sunny Southland, Where sunbeams dance and play. Yet oft in dreams I
hear her crooning, Crooning soft and low: 'Sleep on, baby boy, The
sleep will make you grow.'
"Oft when tired of fighting In a world so full of wrong; When wearied
and worried With the tumult and the throng, I seek again the cabin,
Where dwelt a heart of gold And in dreams she loves and pets me, As
she did in days of old.
"Oh, my dear old colored mammy, In the cabin far away, Since you
rocked me in the cradle Seems forever and a day. Yet in dreams I hear
you crooning Above my cradle nest; 'Sleep on, baby boy, Mammy
watches while you rest.'"
A white baby, whose mother was ill for months, was given to one of
these colored mothers to nurse. After the war the white family moved
west. As their child grew up the father and mother often told her about
Aunt Hannah, how she loved her, petted her, cooked for her, and drove
away her own pickaninnies to let "mammy's baby" sleep.
The girl, when she had grown to womanhood, heard that Aunt Hannah
was still living and she longed to see her devoted old colored mammy.
Her parents had the same desire, and with other attachments for the old
southern home, they went back to Georgia on a visit and to the village
where the old woman lived. She was sent for and the old black mammy
and the beautiful young girl faced each other. The young lady was
disappointed. She expected to see a nice, comely old woman, but there
she stod, crippled with rheumatism, gray headed, wrinkled, and poorly
clad. The old woman was surprised, for there before her stood a
beautiful young woman, with rosy cheeks, blue eyes, auburn locks and
queenly form. The father and mother stood near, with tears rolling
down their cheeks as memory came surging up like successive waves
from out a past hallowed to them, for they could see in that old woman
the health and strength of their child.

The old woman broke the silence, saying: "Is dat my chile? Is dat de
chile I loved and laid wake wif so many nights and cooked so many
sweet things for? Why, bless yo' heart, honey; dese old hands ust to
take yo' and hug yo' to dis bosom, but yo's too nice now for dese old
hands to eber touch agin."
The young girl said: "No, I'm not, Aunt Hannah. You shall take me in
your arms as when I was a little child," and she gave a bound into the
old woman's arms.
That does not mean social equality, but it does mean gratitude neither
condition nor color can ever bound. If the reciprocities of that old
woman and that beautiful girl were such as to weave enrichments into
both hearts, why should not all peoples, and all individuals, see in all
others but a multiplication of the one each of us is, and that each is
enhanced or diminished in value according to the concentrated worth of
the whole? If man would stand in his lot of conformity to man, as that
old colored woman stood in her lot, it would lift this world to that
height from which we could see the one interest, one reciprocal,
interdependent, together-woven, God-allied and God-saved humanity.
But in this we fail. Several men, one of them an Irishman, were
standing on a street corner when a negro passed. The Irishman said:
"Faith, and if I had been makin' humanity for a world, I would niver
have made a nager." I suppose in return the negro would not have made
the Irishman, nor would the white man have made the Indian or
Chinaman, but God made them all and in proportion as we have the
philanthropic comprehensiveness to accept them all, and benevolently
try to serve them in their places, do we honor the place assigned us in
the world's creation. It is not for us to know why God made this or that;
He made everything for a purpose.
A father took his boy to an animal show. The lad had never seen a
monkey and as they played their pranks about the cage he said: "Father,
did God make monkeys?"
When the father replied: "Yes," the boy said: "Well, don't you guess
God laughed when he made the first monkey?"

I don't know about that, but if