These establishments result from the
recognition of the fact also, that we have all a common
interest--moral, political, and pecuniary--in the education of the
whole community." Those gloriously exclusive schools I had no wish to
visit. But I felt a peculiar pleasure in visiting this humbler yet
well-conducted institution, for the benefit of those who are despised
and degraded on account of their colour. As I entered, a music-master
was teaching them, with the aid of a piano, to sing some select pieces
for an approaching examination, both the instrument and the master
having been provided by the generous Gilmore. Even the music-master,
notwithstanding his first-rate ability, suffers considerable loss of
patronage on account of his services in this branded school. Among the
pieces sung, and sung exceedingly well, was the following touching
appeal, headed "The Fugitive Slave to the Christian"--Air,
"Cracovienne."
"The fetters galled my weary soul,--
A soul that seemed but thrown away:
I spurned the tyrant's base control,
Resolved at last the man to play:
The hounds are haying on my track;
O Christian! will you send me back?
"I felt the stripes,--the lash I saw,
Red dripping with a father's gore;
And, worst of all their lawless law,
The insults that my mother bore!
The hounds are baying on my track;
O Christian! will you send me back?
"Where human law o'errules Divine,
Beneath the sheriff's hammer fell
My wife and babes,--I call them mine,--
And where they suffer who can tell?
The hounds are baying on my track;
O Christian! will you send me back?
"I seek a home where man is man,
If such there be upon this earth,--
To draw my kindred, if I can,
Around its free though humble hearth.
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