His
voice range out clear and true, and he paused impressively as he
made each point. Within ten minutes the multitude was in an
uproar of enthusiasm -- handkerchiefs were waved, canes were
flourished, hats were tossed in the air. The fairest women of
Georgia stood up and cheered. It was as if the orator had
bewitched them.
And when he held his dusky hand high above his head, with the
fingers stretched wide apart, and said to the white people of the
South on behalf of his race, "In all things that are purely social
we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all
things essential to mutual progress," the great wave of sound
dashed itself against the walls, and the whole audience was on its
feet in a delirium of applause, and I thought at that moment of
the night when Henry Grady stood among the curling wreaths of
tobacco-smoke in Delmonico's banquet-hall and said, "I am a
Cavalier among Roundheads."
I have heard the great orators of many countries, but not even
Gladstone himself could have pleased a cause with most consummate
power than did this angular Negro, standing in a nimbus of
sunshine, surrounded by the men who once fought to keep his race
in bondage.
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