to them. * No one could cross the thresholds of the cabins and not see the old and well-known problems of life and striving. More and more, therefore, the work met Miss Taylor’s approval and she told Mrs.
At the same time Mary Taylor had come to some other definite conclusions:
- she believed it wrong to encourage the ambitions of these children to any great extent;
- she believed they should be servants and farmers, content to work under present conditions until those conditions could be changed; and
- she believed that the local white aristocracy, helped by Northern philanthropy, should take charge of such gradual changes.
These conclusions she did not pretend to have originated; but she adopted them from reading and conversation, after hesitating for a year before such puzzling contradictions as Bles Alwyn and Harry Cresswell. For her to conclude to treat Bles Alwyn as a man despite his color was as impossible as to think Mr. ¬ÝCresswell a criminal. Some compromise was imperative which would save her the pleasure of Mr. ¬ÝCresswell‚Äôs company and at the same time leave open a way of fulfilling the world‚Äôs duty to this black boy. She thought she had found this compromise and she wrote Mrs. ¬ÝGrey suggesting a chain of endowed Negro schools under the management of trustees composed of Northern business men and