He saw that the essay's subject was a negro, a slave; and all his
impassioned detestation of the latter term possessed him. The essence
of the Meikeljohns was a necessity for freedom, an almost bitter pride
in the independence of their bodies. Their souls they held to be under
the domination of a relentless Omnipotence, evolved, it might have
been, from the obdurate and resplendent granite masses of the highland
where they had first survived. These qualities gave to Elim
Meikeljohn's political enmity for the South a fervor closely resembling
fanaticism. Even now when, following South Carolina, six other states
had seceded, he did not believe that war would ensue; he believed that
slavery would be abolished at a lesser price; but he was a supporter of
drastic means for its suppression. His Christianity, if it held a book
in one hand, grasped a sword in the other, a sword with a bright and
unsparing blade for the wrong-doer.
He consciously centered this antagonism on Rosemary Roselle; he
visualized her as a thoughtless and capricious female, idling in vain
luxury, cutting with a hard voice at helpless and enslaved human
beings. He condemned his former looseness of being, his playing with
insidious and destructive forces. A phrase, "Babylonish women," crept
into his mind from some old yellow page. He read:
"Indy is a large light mulatto, very neat and very slow. She has not
much Sense, but a great deal of Sensibility. Helping her proves Fatal.
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