union with a negro.[1] The two races are essentially distinct, and that is quite enough to produce the sentiment referred to, without the supposition of intrinsic inferiority on either side. It would certainly be a more manly and dignified course for the intelligent free blacks in America to take this view of the subject and act accordingly, than to degrade themselves by servilely courting the society of the whites, content to be received among them on terms of mere sufferance.
"But we claim the right," they may say, "to remain in America: it is the place of our birth, and therefore our proper and legitimate home." Grant the right: yet does it follow that it is the wisest course, under present circumstances, to use it? "All things,". says the Apostle, "are lawful for me; but all things are not expedient." Where is the wisdom of contending for a barren right — when a voluntary abandonment of it would bring to the holder far greater ease,
- ↑ Says Park, "I had no sooner entered the court appropriated to the ladies, than the whole seraglio surrounded me. They were ten or twelve in number, most of them young and handsome, and wearing on their heads ornaments of gold and beads of amber. They rallied me: with a good deal of gaiety, on different subjects, particularly on the whiteness of my skin and the prominency of my nose. They insisted that both were artificial The first, they said, was produced when I was an infant, by dipping me in milk; and they insisted that my nose had: been pinched every day, till it had acquired its present unsightly and unnatural conformation. On my part, without denying my own deformity, I paid them many compliments on African beauty: I praised the glossy jet of their skins, and the lovely depression of their noses. But they said that flattery or (as they emphatically termed it) honey-mouth, was not esteemed in Bornou. In return, however, for my company or compliments (to which, by the way, they seemed not so insensible is they affected to be) they presented me with a jar of honey and some fish, which were sent to my lodgings." — Park's Travels, chap. iv.
