Uncle Dayton had helped many a one through the tangled maze of Euclid
problems and their like, and when John walked along by his side in ease
and pleasure, Mr. Dayton was delighted; and when he came to see us, he
said:
"The fellow is a man, he's a man clear through.
"Why," said he, "I was just the one to carry him along all right. I was
the first man to take a colored boy into a private school, and I did it
under protest, losing some of the white boys, whose parents would not
let them stay; not much of a loss either," he added, "though they
behaved nearly as well as the colored boys I took. I belonged at the
time to the Baptist Church; the colored woman, whose two sons I received
into my school, was a member of the same church; three boys, whose
parents were my brothers and sisters in the faith, were withdrawn, and
the minister who had baptized us all, and declared us to be one in the
name of the humble Nazarene, also withdrew his son from my school, being
unwilling to have him recite in the class with these two boys, whose
skin was almost as white as his own. The natural inference was, that he
considered himself of more consequence than the Almighty, for he
certainly had given us all to him, and I had verily thought the man
meant to help God do part of his work, but this proved conclusively that
the Lord had it all to do--at any rate that which was not nice enough
for the parson--and it took a large piece of comfort out of my heart.
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