616 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

584 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS,

color, nor yet of the African—but strange to tell, of most
degenerate white.

Third. And the greatest of these wonders, she remained,
as the counsel for the Almshouse charitably testifies, a lady
of virtue and unblemished credit!

T had heard of & sect that trusted more to faith than to
good works, The counsel it appears is of that sect, when he
asks this honorable Court to put its hand and seal to three
such miracles. I would rather be called ignorant and simple
than too learned and perverse. But since I cannot believe
in the metamorphoses of old, nor in the procreations of Jupi-
ter Ammon, I am sour upon the belief of all other such
heathenish stories,

Before I lose myself in the labyrinth through which I am
to tread, that I may not die in the learned counsel’s debt,
I shall firet answer all his observations. If I should miss
my way, and never return to where I set out, my will is
that all concerned shall mourn for me—the whites putting on
black, and the blacks white, in token of affection. Item: the
manuscript I hold in my hand to be deposited in the city
library. Item: the fee which I receive in this cause, to enure
to the benefit of the Almshouse.

The counsel says that the reasoning of my rolleage has not
convinced him. If it had, it would have been a fourth mir
acle; for certainly the counsel’s business here was not to be
convinced.

He triumphantly aska why we did not call the white man?
and T answer, in all simplicity, because we had no need of
him: besides, he is our rival, and carries pistols; and we
disclaim all prying into what does not concern us, and all
indisereet meddling with family affairs.

All the justice we ask for our poor black awain, is not to
pay for a child he never got, nor be made a worker of mir-
acles against his will. The thing of all things of which he
thought the least, and of which he is the least ambitious.

Again, the counse] asks what motive could the woman have
to charge the child to a black father, when she could heave a