"Linda," Mommy said, "I'm sure they must be God's ideas, too. Remember the poem we read called "The Little Black Boy," when I was studying William Blake with Dr. Bernbaum?"

"Yes, the poem was from the Songs of Innocence, about children, and I remember part of it," I answered her.

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but O! My soul is white.

White as an angel is the English child,

But I am black, as if bereaved of light...

 

And we are put on earth a little space,

That we may learn to bear the beams of love;

And these black bodies and this sun burnt face

Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove...

 

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;

And thus I say to little English boy,

When I from black, and he from white cloud free,

And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

 

I'll shade him from the heat, till he can bear

To learn in joy upon our Father's knee;

And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,

And be like him, and he will then love me.(2)

We drove all through Druid Hill Park as soon as we got the car. Grandmommy and Granddaddy always took Mommy and her sisters there so she knew all about the park.

As we rode around the lake we saw a monument to Wallace, a Scottish martyr, and a statue of Columbus. We stopped to look at it. There is a map in his hand.

Mommy told me how he thought he had discovered India when he had really discovered America, how he landed at San Salvador on October 12, 1492, and didn't know about our continent at all. He thought he was claiming rich India for Spain!

She told me how the centuries since the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria had traveled the ocean with a band of outlaws were all leading to the greatest democracy in the world, our United States of America, where all men are created equal, where children can enjoy parks and play without being molested, protected by law and order. They are equal, too, because one is just as the other, and they balance each other: law and order.

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