An Unoficial Patriot

end and temperament. Perhaps, too, it is just as well for me to make another statement, which shall count in his favor or to his disadvantage,

may say that he had been a law-breaker in his native State, and was, at the

er from either the facts or my intentions herein. But that it is of a different type and trend is equally beyond controversy. The prickings of the one are as regular and as incessant, no doubt, as are those of the other; but the stimulating causes have different roots. Perhaps, too, it may sound strange to you to hear of one who can be spoken of as having a somewhat sensitive conscience and at the same time as being both a law-breaker and a law-evad

pinion of the quality of the Rev. Griffith Davenport's conduct may be, there is another side to the

a law-evader, which, I admit, does not at the first blush present a picture to the mind of a person in whom you and I, my lofty and immaculate friend, would be greatly interested, or with whom we would care to associate for any protracted period. Still, I intend to tell the story, and in order to give you a perfectly clear idea of how all the more important events in this

ime, just turned his fifteenth year, but it was not until nearly four years later, when the tide of interest and excitement had swept with a power and influence impossible to picture in these days of religious indifference and critical inquiry, into

every school-boy knows of doubts and questionings in the minds of his elders, to picture ad

e accepted the basic principle of Christianity. All sprang from the same root. Some grew eastward, some westward, and some made straight for heaven like the center shaft of a great oak; but each and all were true limbs of the same healthful trunk whose roots found anchorage in the bed-rock of eternal truth. He did not know that there were other trees quite as vigorous and even more expansive, each of which had sprung from the seed of human longing to solve the unsolvable. The "heathen" he had heard of, of course, in a condemnatory or pitying way, but he did not know or think of their worship as "religion." It was "fetichism," idolatry, supers

in some sort, Christians also. Mistaken in method, no doubt; superstitious and blundering perhaps; but still secretly filled with sorrow and shame for the awful crime of their race, and accepting the verdict of God and the disciplining punishment of time, he had no doubt of their final acceptance of what he believed established as eternal Truth, and their consequent redemption and salvation. The easy-going, gentle Episcopalianism of his home-training, with its morning and evening, perfunctory

e; as some equally important things have come to you and to me-a

lar order of events, do not arouse within us doubts and questionings as do sudden or startling additions to our development or intellectual equipment, when thrust unexpectedly in upon our ordinary surroundings. Such moral or

r to all parties concerned not to state clearly and fully that the righteousness and inevitability of the relationship of owned and owner, had no m

copalian,-in so far as the Almighty would permit one whose skin was black to be of the elect. They one and all felt a real and eager pride in the social and religious status of the Davenports, and had never even harbored a doubt that they would be permitted to p

course his own destination was sure. And the negro felt equally secure when he thought, "Mos' Grif ain

sort. Aroused energies, stimulated consciences, excited mentalities are ever likely to find varying outlets. Progressive movements seldom travel singly, and so it came about that, mingled w

rrepressible conflict had arisen in a new form to vex the souls and arouse the passions of men. The pressing question of free soil or slave extension had already begun to urge itself upon the public mind and to harass the Border States, finding utterance for or against that Congressional measure known as the Missouri Compromise Bill. Young Griffith Davenport had spent his seventeen years in an atmosphere of scholarly investigation and calm, where little of even the echoes of these disturbing influences had come. His home was a comfortable one-indeed, the finest in all that part of the valley; the libr

unlearned men sprang into prominence at a single bound. Arguments arose. Men began to ask if the Almighty was pleased with forms in which the soul was dead-if mere words, and not sincere emotion of the heart, gr

h a new meaning and a different force. Whereas they had been mere vocal emphasis, now they

hose meetings he had, at first, gone in a spirit of mild fun, not in the least