America Beyond Black and White How Immigrants and

Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide

Contemporary Political and Social Issues 1st
edition, Edition Ronald Fernandez - PDF Download
(2025)
https://ebookultra.com/download/america-beyond-black-and-white-
how-immigrants-and-fusions-are-helping-us-overcome-the-racial-
divide-contemporary-political-and-social-issues-1st-edition-
edition-ronald-fernandez/

Visit ebookultra.com today to download the complete set of

ebooks or textbooks
Here are some recommended products for you. Click the link to
download, or explore more at ebookultra.com

Mexico Economic Political and Social Issues Economic

Political and Social Issues 1st Edition Maria L. Castro

https://ebookultra.com/download/mexico-economic-political-and-social-
issues-economic-political-and-social-issues-1st-edition-maria-l-
castro/

Beyond Bad How obsolete morals are holding us back 1st

Edition Chris Paley

https://ebookultra.com/download/beyond-bad-how-obsolete-morals-are-
holding-us-back-1st-edition-chris-paley/

Diversity Explosion How New Racial Demographics Are

Remaking America 11k Edition William H. Frey

https://ebookultra.com/download/diversity-explosion-how-new-racial-
demographics-are-remaking-america-11k-edition-william-h-frey/

Social Science Technical Systems and Cooperative Work

Beyond the Great Divide Geoffrey Bowker (Ed.)

https://ebookultra.com/download/social-science-technical-systems-and-
cooperative-work-beyond-the-great-divide-geoffrey-bowker-ed/
New Black Politician The Cory Booker Newark and Post
Racial America 1st , 1st Pri Edition Andra Gillespie

https://ebookultra.com/download/new-black-politician-the-cory-booker-
newark-and-post-racial-america-1st-1st-pri-edition-andra-gillespie/

Environmental Crime and Social Conflict Contemporary and

Emerging Issues Avi Brisman

https://ebookultra.com/download/environmental-crime-and-social-
conflict-contemporary-and-emerging-issues-avi-brisman/

Achieving Anew How New Immigrants Do in American Schools

Jobs and Neighborhoods Michael J. White

https://ebookultra.com/download/achieving-anew-how-new-immigrants-do-
in-american-schools-jobs-and-neighborhoods-michael-j-white/

Acting White Rethinking Race in Post Racial America 1st

Edition Devon W. Carbado

https://ebookultra.com/download/acting-white-rethinking-race-in-post-
racial-america-1st-edition-devon-w-carbado/

Helping Students Overcome Depression and Anxiety A

Practical Guide 2nd Edition Kenneth W. Merrell

https://ebookultra.com/download/helping-students-overcome-depression-
and-anxiety-a-practical-guide-2nd-edition-kenneth-w-merrell/
America Beyond Black and White How Immigrants and
Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Contemporary Political and Social Issues 1st edition,
Edition Ronald Fernandez Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Ronald Fernandez
ISBN(s): 9780472116096, 0472116096
Edition: 1st edition,
File Details: PDF, 1.18 MB
Year: 2007
Language: english
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press

America Beyond Black and White

America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press

America Beyond
Black and White
} } }

How Immigrants and Fusions Are

Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide

Ronald Fernandez

The University of Michigan Press • Ann Arbor

America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press

Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2007

All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
c Printed on acid-free paper
2010 2009 2008 2007 4 3 2 1

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise,
without the written permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fernandez, Ronald.
America beyond black and white : how immigrants and fusions are
helping us overcome the racial divide / Ronald Fernandez.
p. cm. — (Contemporary political and social issues)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-472-11609-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-472-11609-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. United States—Race relations. 2. United States—Ethnic
relations. 3. United States—Emigration and immigration—Social
aspects. 4. Immigrants—United States—Social conditions.
5. Minorities—United States—Social conditions. 6. Racially-mixed
people—United States—Social conditions. 7. Assimilation
(Sociology)—United States. I. Title.
e184.a1f473 2007
305.800973—dc22 2007019355

A Caravan book. For more information, visit www.caravanbooks.org

America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press

To jacob morton fernandez

A fantastic fusion of Colombian, French,

Irish, Japanese, & Spanish heritages
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press

Acknowledgments

I owe a great debt to Luis Nieves Falcon (in Puerto Rico) and Rex Net-
tleford (in Jamaica). Like two brothers, they introduced me to their
Caribbean worlds, and, in the process, they changed my life. With
love, thank you.
Research for this book included visits to the Kennedy, Johnson,
and Reagan Presidential Libraries. The libraries are true arsenals of
democracy, staffed by archivists who always do everything they can to
get scholars all available documents.
Rather than risk missing someone, I would like to say thanks to all
the people who helped at the Intercollegiate Conference on Mixed
Race Students, at the seventy-‹fth anniversary meeting of the Japanese
American Citizenship League, at the Unity Conference of Journalists
in Washington, D.C., and at the Borderlands Conference in Laredo;
to everyone who helped arrange the visit to the Arab American com-
munity in Detroit; to our dancer hosts in Jamaica; to the Hartford-
based West Indian Foundation; to our many guides in Puerto Rico and
Vieques; to our hosts in Mexico, San Diego, and Los Angeles; and to
all the folks in Cuba, who, through four trips, extended a warm wel-
come and a wonderful introduction to Cuba’s spectacular culture.
Antonio Garcia Lozada, Martin Espada, Elaine Cartland, and
Susan Pease all offered comments about the manuscript in process.
Their comments and criticisms were both helpful and necessary. So
too the very thorough peer reviews commissioned by the University of
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press
viii } Acknowledgments

Michigan Press. The last chapter now includes a discussion of the

2005–2006 immigration debates because of a pointed suggestion by
one of the reviewers.
At Central Connecticut State University, Paul Altieri, Steve Cox,
Debbie Peterson, and Mary Wood also provided much needed assis-
tance.
At the University of Michigan Press, Jim Reische is an editor who
became a friend. He copyedited the manuscript with great skill and
empathy. Jim is so good that he should serve as a model for anyone
editing someone else’s work. It was a pleasure to work again with Phil
Pochoda, director of the University of Michigan Press. He and his staff
operate with an enviable degree of both transparency and profession-
alism. Sarah Remington was always helpful, kind, and very ef‹cient.
Kevin Rennells coordinated the publishing process with great skill and
much understanding. Finally, my thanks to Anne Taylor for an excel-
lent copyedit of the manuscript.
Tammy Morton and Adam Fernandez helped me in countless
ways, not the least of which was providing the idea for the book. Car-
rie and Benjamin Fernandez listened to their father’s ideas with
patience and a smile, even when I was guilty of acting too much like a
professor.
This book would not exist without Brenda Harrison. She provided
the book’s original title. She acted as my partner at the presidential
libraries; and she was also my partner on each of the research trips.
There is no part of this book that has not bene‹ted from her acute
intelligence, curiosity, support, and love. I, of course, am alone
responsible for any errors.
The book is dedicated to our grandson, Jacob Morton Fernandez.
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press

Contents

Introduction 1

One A Historical Opportunity

immigrants, fusions, and
the reconfiguration of
american culture 9

Two Dead End

the white/black dichotomy 28

Three Murals and Mexicans

chicanos in the united states 60

Four Asian Americans

non-european and nonwhite 94

Five The Other Others

indians and arabs 125

Six The Caribbean

puerto ricans, west indians,
cubans 159

Seven The Question Marks

mixed-race americans 192

Eight A Heart Transplant 220

Epilogue
our fusion family 252

Notes 255
Select Bibliography 274
Index 277
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press

Introduction
}

Emilie Hammerstein has a problem. Her dad is German, her mother is

Chinese, and she constantly gets the same question from total
strangers: “What are you?”
Emilie generally responds in a polite manner, but once the intrud-
ers leave she questions herself as forcefully as the daily gauntlet of
strangers. “I have often felt that the world is not ready for someone
like me, someone who is a walking contradiction to their cultural
de‹nitions. They don’t understand that it can be confusing for me to
be constantly asked, ‘What are you?’”1
Emilie’s question—America’s question—is one signi‹cant indica-
tion of an unprecedented challenge to U.S. culture. Millions of other
American combinations share Emilie’s sense of being a walking con-
tradiction to the white/black dichotomy. In everyday life, U.S. culture
still calls these (mostly younger) men and women “mixed-race” Amer-
icans. Many stoically endure that label, but others de‹antly reject it
and its everyday associates, negative markers like “half ”; “exotic”;
“tragic mulatto”; or, perhaps worst of all, “half-breed.”
One term they do embrace is fusion, an idea I ‹rst became aware of
at the 2004 National Student Conference on the Mixed Race Experi-
ence. Fusions argue that all human beings are ethnic combinations.
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press
2 } America Beyond Black and White

They believe that there is one race, the human race, and that the
human race is, by de‹nition, a ceaseless series of human unions.
Fusions also deliberately refuse to use skin color as an important way
to identify anyone on earth. They believe that, instead of being self-
segregating barriers to interaction, somatic differences are delightful
and diverse manifestations of the underlying and indissoluble unity of
six billion people.
From the fusion’s perspective, assimilation is a form of masochism:
why embrace a society that lacks positive words to describe them? As
“walking contradictions,” these Americans try to recon‹gure the cul-
ture. They want to instigate a mutiny. When the rest of us ask them,
“What are you?” they respond with questions of their own. What kind
of culture cuts people into mixtures and halves? Since even the small-
est group of people manifests meaningful genetic differences, what is
the basis for the idea of racial purity? How can anyone have the audac-
ity to talk about me as a “mixture,” when the idea of racial purity is as
valid as the beliefs of the Flat Earth Society?
These questions will not disappear. On the contrary, the often con-
tentious debates about the “racial” identities of ‹gures like Senator
Barack Obama and Tiger Woods suggest that the future promises more
discussion than ever. Here are the Census Bureau’s estimates for the
next ‹fty years. As the Census Bureau indicates, “All other races” are
growing at a rapid pace because, among other things, close to 60 per-
cent of Asian Americans under the age of 25 marry outside of their eth-
nicity.2 Emilie Hammerstein represents an integral part of America’s
future, and, in her need to ‹nd positive words to describe herself, Emi-
lie and her cohort pose questions that may fundamentally recon‹gure
American culture. Put differently, Emile and her cohort hope to eman-
cipate everyone from slavery’s most lasting ideological legacy, the
white/black dichotomy that, 140 years after the end of the Civil War,
still de‹nes Americans by what poisonously divides Americans.

All Other Races in 2000 7.1 million and 2.5 percent of our people
All Other Races in 2020 11.8 million and 3.5 percent of our people
All Other Races in 2050 22.4 million and 5.3 percent of our people
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press
Introduction } 3

Emilie has company, lots of it. Like an obsolete computer running

new software, American society crashes when confronted with the
more than fifty million citizens who are incompatible with our operat-
ing system of racial beliefs. Latinos, Asians, West Indians, Arabs, Pak-
istanis, and Indians are neither black nor white; they can never fully
embrace the culture, and it never fully embraces them because the
nation’s dictionary of racial de‹nitions—what the sociologist Erving
Goffman called our “grammar of conduct”—offers no accepted,
much less positive, way to describe them. For example, many immi-
grants from Pakistan have darker skins than African Americans, but
we never call them black. So, what are they? “None of the above”
receives the check mark, because, from their perspective—one that
they share with bronze-skinned Latinos, Indians, and Arabs—the
operating system is a mystery, and so are they if they try to think in
white and black.
Consider three provocative paradoxes posed by many of America’s
most recent immigrants.

• According to the Census Bureau, white people attacked America

on September 11, 2001. That may sound absurd unless we remem-
ber that the U.S. Census Bureau de‹nes “white as referring to
people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the
Middle East or North Africa.” From one perspective, this repre-
sents a reverse “one drop rule”; instead of one drop of black blood
making you black, one drop of white blood makes you white, even
if your skin is as dark as that of former Egyptian president Anwar
Sadat. The Census Bureau helps makes our cultural rules, so, if we
use it as a guide, the Arabs who executed the hideous attack on the
World Trade Center were white men. The idea of “white Arabs”
forces us to ask questions like these: are the census categories
rational, much less valid? Or, are they, as some Arab Americans
argue, “a peculiar ‹xation” of a culture so addicted to thinking in
two colors that it must squeeze brown people into white boxes?3
• The United States is home to more than one million West Indian
Americans, the majority from the Caribbean nation of Jamaica.
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press
4 } America Beyond Black and White

Jamaicans in Kingston or Ocho Rios certainly see the dark color of

their skin but rarely dwell on it. Instead, Jamaicans use their nation
and culture as all-important axes of social and personal self-esteem.
Jamaican pride is a delight to see but becomes a problem the
moment a Jamaican lands in New York. Now they are black; of
course, they already knew that. But until they arrived in the United
States, no one told them that they were only black. The realization
is often so jolting and uncomfortable that Jamaicans (and Trinida-
dians) resist assimilation. Instead, they ridicule American attitudes
toward color by asking two sometimes very angry questions. How
can dark-skinned people who use culture as an axis of identity
assimilate into a society that only wants to de‹ne them by the color
of their skin? And, why should they ‹t into American categories? If
Jamaicans make skin color a secondary or peripheral consideration
in judging themselves and others, maybe Americans should use
Jamaicans as role models rather than vice versa?
• A ‹nal example comes from a question posed by one of my col-
leagues who had attended the 2004 Unity Conference of seven
thousand “minority” journalists in Washington, D.C. Mexican,
Puerto Rican, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Iranian professionals
all agreed they were neither black nor white. Each group stood out-
side the dichotomy, but all still referred to themselves as “people of
color.” Stimulated by the immigrants’ choice, my colleague wanted
to know how Americans could ever create a color-blind society if
immigrants were taught to use color as the primary basis for self-
identi‹cation. Even more important, the immigrants’ choice led
my colleague to these perplexing conclusions: If Asians, Latinos,
and Arabs were people of color, then white people had no color
even though they and everyone else called them white. In essence,
white was not a color, but people of color only existed in relation to white
people, who did not get a color because they were white, which is not
a color.

In this book, none-of-the-above immigrants are a blessing, never in

disguise. In trying to comprehend or ‹t into the white/black
dichotomy, Asians, Latinos, West Indians, Arabs, and (India) Indians
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press
Introduction } 5

ask us to rethink what the sociologists Robert and Helen Merrell Lynd
called America’s “of course” assumptions. Many immigrants suggest
that our operating system of racial beliefs is weird or even a form of
cultural insanity; and many of them are as eager for a full-scale mutiny
as are Emilie and millions of other mixed-race Americans.
For the ‹rst time in U.S history, the white/black dichotomy faces a
challenge, not from a small and insigni‹cant minority but from the
fastest-growing and arguably most vocal segment of the increasingly
diverse American people. Consider the broad demographic outlines
of America’s future from the 2000 census.

Latinos in 2000 35.6 million and 12.6 percent of our people

Latinos in 2020 59.7 million and 17.8 percent of our people
Latinos in 2050 102.5 million and 24.4 percent of our people

Asians in 2000 10.6 million and 3.8 percent of our people

Asians in 2020 17.9 million and 5.4 percent of our people
Asians in 2050 33.4 million and 8 percent of our people

Blacks in 2000 35.8 million and 12.7 percent of our people

Blacks in 2020 45.3 million and 13.5 percent of our people
Blacks in 2050 61.3 million and 14.6 percent of our people

Whites in 2000 195.7 million and 65 percent of our people

Whites in 2020 205 million and 61.3 percent of our people
Whites in 2050 210 million and 50.1 percent of our people

All Other Races in 2000 7.1 million and 2.5 percent of our people
All Other Races in 2020 11.8 million and 3.5 percent of our people
All Other Races in 2050 22.4 million and 5.3 percent of our people

More than ‹fty million Americans and their children cannot or will
not assimilate into American culture. In cities like Detroit (Arab
Americans); San Diego (Mexican Americans); Edison, New Jersey
(Indians); Seattle (mixed-race Americans); and Hartford (Puerto
Ricans and Jamaicans), millions of new Americans busily engage in a
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press
6 } America Beyond Black and White

series of parallel monologues. Working within their own ethnic

groups, newcomers encounter what Harvard’s Samuel Huntington
calls “Anglo-Protestant culture,” and, in the process of trying to com-
prehend how Americans think, Chicanos or West Indians regularly
engage in tightly bounded acts of de‹ance. Each group provides more
or less mutinous answers for its own members, but none seeks to pro-
vide a new cultural consensus for the nation as a whole.
This book argues that a new consensus can emerge if we consider
what these parallel monologues tell us about U.S. culture as it is seen
by none-of-the-above immigrants and fusions. Since a cultural mutiny
is already under way, Americans have only two choices: understand
why none-of-the-above Americans think as they do or stumble into a
future that continues to de‹ne Americans by what divides them rather
than by what unites them.
Some Americans will understandably question the need for a
mutiny. Many of my students, for example, claim that they do not
think in terms of race and ethnicity. They judge people by their char-
acter, not by the set of prejudices that guided their parents and grand-
parents. “Get over it,” say many younger Americans. Why do we need
to listen to multiculturalism lectures that only echo what we already
think?
There has been substantial change over the last forty or ‹fty years.
Many Americans are much more comfortable with difference than
our predecessors were. But, to those who argue that a mutiny is unnec-
essary, I would ask these questions. If radical change is not required,
why do the children of mixed-race marriages encounter some of the
ugliest “racial” prejudice that America has to offer? Emilie Hammer-
stein’s parents, a German man and a Chinese woman, married
because they happily transcend the bigoted past; yet Emilie, as the
child of color-blind Americans, every day faces the terrible discrimi-
nation and pain that occur because “halves” do not ‹t into a culture
still dominated by race and the white/black dichotomy.
Put differently, if everything is OK, why was it necessary for Donna
Jackson Nakazawa to publish (in 2003) a book titled Does Anybody Else
Look Like Me? A Parents Guide to Raising Multiracial Children. This book
helps parents protect their mixed-race children from the rest of us!
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press
Introduction } 7

Let me repeat: substantial change has occurred, and the young-

sters who argue that they no longer harbor prejudices are genuine. No
one is lying. But the “get over it” attitude leads people to assume that,
because they have changed, Americans have somehow leapfrogged
over ‹ve hundred years of history without discarding some of its most
basic and crucial forms of self-identi‹cation.
Here is my request. To those who argue that a radical recon‹gura-
tion is unnecessary, suspend judgment until we ‹rst analyze the
debates taking place throughout the United States. Latinos, Arabs,
and Asians, among others, argue that racial thinking is still a very vital
part of everyday American life. Whatever we may think is happening,
new immigrants still encounter a world aptly described by Senator
Richard Durbin in congressional debates that occurred on March 27,
2006: “America has two great traditions. We are a nation of immi-
grants and we are a nation intolerant of immigrants.”
In the chapters that follow, America Beyond Black and White listens
carefully to the series of parallel monologues now occurring in the dis-
united states of America. The book also examines the history of vari-
ous groups. This historical analysis serves three purposes: It helps
explain the diverse and often negative reactions of these groups to
American racial thinking; it underlines the continuing power of nine-
teenth- and early twentieth-century U.S. history to still set the parame-
ters of American beliefs about race, ethnicity, and the place of non-
European immigrants in American life; and, ‹nally, it helps “right”
American history.
The history of none-of-the-above immigrants argues that, ‹rst, the
melting pot is a myth and that, second, it is a myth that acts as a tow-
ering barrier to any future sense of national unity. In the past, groups
like Arabs, Indians, Mexicans, and Asians learned that American cul-
ture never included their ethnic ingredients. Today, still faced with
the rejection and confusion rooted in American history, millions of
none-of-the-above immigrants deliberately isolate themselves from a
society that treats them no better than it does Emilie Hammerstein
and her seven million fellow fusions.
In essence, the immigrants, their (increasingly fused) children,
and their experiences in the United States offer us an unprecedented
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press
8 } America Beyond Black and White

chance to, all together, provide a radically imaginative answer to a

question ‹rst posed by Randolph Bourne in 1916, “What shall we do
with our America?”
That is the monumental question posed by none-of-the-above
immigrants and mixed-race Americans. Should we abolish America’s
operating system of racial beliefs? Should we exchange the challenged
metaphor of the melting pot for another ideal? And, if so, where do
we all go from here? How, rooted in a more complete picture of U.S.
immigrant history, can we create a world where Americans de‹ne one
another by what unites them—their shared humanity— rather than by
what divides them: the color of their skin and a descending scale of
superior and inferior races?
We have meaningful cause for optimism, especially if we begin by
accurately grasping how and why the United States of America funda-
mentally transformed its immigration laws in 1965.
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press

One

A Historical Opportunity
}
Immigrants, Fusions, and the
Recon‹guration of American Culture

The rat is dead, exterminated, in a nineteenth-century newspaper ad,

by a pest-control product called “Rough on Rats.” For ‹fteen cents a
box, the poisonous pellets also cleared out mice, bed bugs, ›ies, and
roaches; nothing survived this pesticide except the Chinese coolie
carefully caricatured just below the dead pest. In the ad the Chinese
man relishes rats; he is about to pop a juicy specimen into his mouth,
and when he ‹nishes his appetizer he can reach for the main course,
another fat rat suspended from his pants.
Above him is emblazoned an anti-immigrant slogan then popular
throughout the nation: “They must go.” The Chinese need to leave
because they are rough on rats and rougher on the white race threat-
ened by the Chinese immigrants who, in 1886, provided almost 90
percent of California’s agricultural labor force.1
The conundrum is a constant of U.S. history. Groups of immi-
grants do the nation’s dirty, dangerous, and demanding work. Then,
when they prove to be “incapable of assimilation,” federal of‹cials tell

9
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press
10 } America Beyond Black and White

them to disappear as quickly as the Chinese workers who were blown

up creating tunnels for the transcontinental railroad.
Chinese immigrants also enjoy the distinction of being the ‹rst
group legally barred from the United States. Congress initially for-
bade their entry in 1882. Ten years later Congress extended the Chi-
nese Exclusion Act. In 1917, in the midst of ‹ghting what President
Wilson called “the culminating and ‹nal war for human liberty,” Con-
gress erased an entire continent. No Asians. No more.
Over time, Congress also slammed the door in the face of many
southern Europeans. In the House of Representatives, members
argued that the Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, and Spanish looked sus-
piciously like a cloud of “locusts.” During legislative hearings, Con-
gressman Albert Johnson told his colleagues that the newcomer crept
up one block at a time; they swarmed neighborhoods and threatened
to contaminate, through intermarriage, the sacred core of American
culture.
That core was supposedly made up of English, Irish, and Germans.
But, since 1897, three times as many people (ten million) had immi-
grated from southern as from northern Europe. Representative
William Vaile of Colorado played the role of Aesop when he told his
colleagues a fable about alligators and cats: “The cat looked the alli-
gator over the very moment the alligator was brought into the house.
The alligator snapped at the cat frequently; and the alligator kept
growing larger and larger. The cat did not grow. And, ‹nally, one day
the alligator killed the cat.”2
The cat was in danger because poverty had driven southern Euro-
pean alligators to America’s shores and because Congress then prac-
ticed a form of what today we call af‹rmative action. In the early twen-
tieth century U.S. immigration laws offered ironclad preferences for
the close relatives of new American citizens. Family reuni‹cation
allowed one immigrant to easily multiply into three or even ‹ve. And,
since the relatives also had relatives, the newcomers kept coming,
threatening to overrun one neighborhood after another.
To safeguard what Samuel Huntington had recently called “Anglo-
Protestant culture,” Congress passed laws in 1924 that institutional-
ized discrimination against prospective immigrants based on their eth-
America Beyond Black and White: How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide
Ronald Fernandez
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268662
The University of Michigan Press
A Historical Opportunity } 11

nic origin. Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians were granted no immi-
gration slots. As Congressman John Miller put it in December 1923,
“we are fairly settled with the Chinese (and other Asians); they cannot
come; they understand it; we understand it.”3
Congress devised an ingenious statistical formula to exclude the
southern Europeans. Every European nation received the same hypo-
thetical annual quota: 2 percent to England, 2 percent to Spain. This
appeared to offer a real measure of equality, but Italians, Greeks, and
other new-seed immigrants had only arrived in large numbers after
1890. Congress set 1890 as the dividing line for their computations.
The 1924 law dictated that a nation was allocated its immigration slots
based on 2 percent of that nation’s percentage of the American pop-
ulation in 1890. As a result, more than 60 percent of the slots went
instantly to Britain, Ireland, and Germany, while the rest of Europe
fought over the few remaining opportunities.4
Forty years later, President Johnson offered Congress this summary
of the nation’s immigrant preferences. Out of 150,000 immigration
slots in 1964, two nations—Great Britain and Ireland—received
83,000 openings, “more quota numbers than are authorized for the
entire rest of the world.” Germany got 25,814 openings while the
numbers for southern Europe included a mere 5,666 slots for Italy,
308 for Greece, 250 for Spain, and 438 for Portugal.5
In most years the three biggest recipients failed to exhaust their
available slots; why would a multitude leave England or Ireland if pos-
itive social conditions prevailed? However, if you wanted a British or
Irish maid, Congress acted quickly. Campaigning for LBJ’s reforms in
1965, Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach told a San Francisco
audience that “an American citizen with a mother in Greece must wait
at least ‹ve years—‘and often longer’—to secure a visa which would
allow her to join him here.” But, if you wanted a maid from England
or Ireland she arrived in four to six weeks.6
From 1924 through 1964, the restrictions against Asians remained
quite tight. When Congress ‹nally repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act
in 1943, it set the new quota at 105 Chinese immigrants a year. Mean-
while, anyone from Korea, China, or Japan always tried to maneuver
his or her way out of a prejudicial process known as the “Asia Paci‹c
Other documents randomly have
different content
 Cipr. A sorcerer! She a sorcerer! oh, black lie
To whiten your defeat! and, were it true,
Oh mighty doctor to be foil’d at last
By a mere woman!—If a sorcerer,
Then of a sort you deal not with, nor hell—
And ev’n Olympus likes the sport too well—
Raising a phantom not to draw me down
To deeper sin, but with its ghastly face
And hollow voice both telling of the tomb
They came from, warning me of what complexion
Were all the guilty wishes of this world.
But let the phantom go where gone it is—
Not of what mock’d me, but what saved herself,
By whatsoever means—ay, what was it,
That pitiful agency you told me of
So insignificant, as overlook’d
At the last moment thwarted us?
Luc. What matter?
When now provided for, and which when told
You know not—
Cipr. Which I will be told to know—
For as one ris’n from darkness tow’rd the light,
A veil seems clearing from before my sight—
She is a sorcerer, and of the kind
That old Lisandro died suspected of?—
Oh cunning doctor, to outwit yourself,
Outwitted as you have been, and shall be
By him who if your devilish magic fail’d
To teach its purposed mischief,
Thus on his teacher turns it back in full
To force him to confess the counter-power
That foil’d us both.
(He catches up his wand.)
 Luc. Poor creature that you are!
Did not the master from his scholars hold
One sleight of hand that masters all the rest,
What magic needed to compel the devil
To convict those who find him out too late?
Yet to increase your wrath by leaving it
Blind in the pit your guilt consigns you to,
I shall not answer—
Cipr. Then if your own hell
Cannot enforce you; by that Unknown Power
That saved Justina from your fangs, although
Yourself you cannot master, if you know,
I charge you name him to me!—
Luc. (after a great flash of lightning, and thunder).
Jesus Christ!
Cipr. (after a pause). Ev’n so!—Christ Jesus—Jesus Christ—the same
That poor Lisandro died suspected of,
And I had heard and read of with the rest
But to despise, in spite of all the blood
By which the chosen few their faith confess’d—
The prophet-carpenter of Nazareth,
Poor, persecuted, buffeted, reviled,
Spit upon, crown’d with thorns, and crucified
With thieves—the Son of God—the Son of man,
Whose shape He took to teach them how to live,
And doff’d upon the cross to do away
The sin and death you and your devil-deities
Had heap’d on him from the beginning?
Luc. Yea!—
Cipr. Of the one sun of Deity one ray
That was before the world was, and that made
The world and all that is within it?
Luc. Yea!
Cipr. Eternal and Almighty then: and yet
I fi it C t h i f ll
Infinite Centre as he is of all
The all but infinite universe he made,
With eyes to see me plotting, and with ear
To hear one solitary creature pray,
From one dark corner of his kingdom?
Luc. Yea!
Cipr. All one, all when, all where, all good, all mighty,
All eye, all ear, all self-integrity—
Methinks this must be He of whom I read
In Greek and Roman sages dimly guess’d,
But never until now fully confess’d
In this poor carpenter of Nazareth,
With poor Justina for his confessor—
And now by thee—by thee—once and again
Spite of thyself—for answer me you must,
Convicted at the bar of your own thunder—
Is this the God for whom I sought so long
In mine own soul and those of other men,
Who from the world’s beginning till to-day
Groped or were lost in utter darkness?
Luc. Yea!
Cipr. Enough; and your confession shall be mine—
Luc. And to like purpose; to believe, confess,
And tremble, in the everlasting fire
Prepared for all who Him against their will
Confess, and in their deeds deny Him—
Cipr. Oh,
Like a flogg’d felon after full confession
Released at last!
Luc. To bind you mine for ever.
Cipr. Thine! What art thou?
Luc. The god whom you must worship.
Cipr. There is no God but one, whom you and I
Alike acknowledge, as in Jesus Christ
Alike acknowledge, as in Jesus Christ
Reveal’d to man. What other god art thou?
Luc. Antichrist! He that all confessing Christ
Confess; Satan, the Serpent, the first Tempter,
Who tempted the first Father of mankind
With the same offer to a like result
That I have tempted thee with; yea, had power
Even Him in His humanity to tempt,
Though Him in vain; the god of this world; if
False god, true devil; true angel as I was,
Son of the morning, Lucifer, who fell
(As first I told thee, had’st thou ears to hear)
For my rebellion down from heaven to hell
More terrible than any Tartarus,
Where over those who fell with me I reign.
Whom, though with them bound in the self-same chain
Of everlasting torment, God allows
To reach my hands out of my prison-house
On all who like me from their God rebel,
As thou hast done.
Cipr. Not when for God I knew Him.
Luc. Ay, but who but for pride and lust like mine
Had known Him sooner—
Cipr. And had sooner known
But for thy lying gods that shut Him out.
Luc. Which others much less wise saw through before.
Cipr. All happy they then! But all guilty I,
Yet thus far guiltless of denying Him
Whom even thou confessest.
Luc. But too late—
Already mine, if not so sworn before,
Yet by this bond—
Cipr. For service unperform’d!
But unperform’d, or done, and payment due,
I fling myself and all my debt on Him
Who died to undertake them—
Luc. He is the Saviour of the innocent,
Not of the guilty.
Cipr. Who alone need saving!
Luc. Damnation is the sinner’s just award,
And He is just.
Cipr. And being just, will not
For wilful blindness tax the want of light:
And All-good as Almighty, and therefore
As merciful as just, will not renounce
Ev’n the worst sinner who confesses Him,
And testifies confession with his blood.
Which, not to waste a moment’s argument,
Too like the old logic that I lost my life in,
And hangs for ever dead upon the cross;
I will forthwith shout my confession,
Into the general ear of Antioch,
And from the evidence of thine own mouth,
Not thee alone, but all thy lying gods,
Convict; and you convicting before God,
Myself by man’s tribunal judged and damn’d,
Trust by my own blood mixing with the tide
That flow’d for me from the Redeemer’s side,
From those few damning drops to wash me free
That bound me thine for ever—
Lucifer (seizing him). Take my answer—
Cipriano (escaping). Oh, Saviour of Justina, save Thou me!
[Exeunt.

Scene III.—The Hall of Justice in Antioch.

Aurelio, Fabio, Senators, etc., just risen from Council.

 Aurelio. You have done well indeed; the very Church
These Christians flock’d to for safe blasphemy
Become the very net to catch them in.
How many, think you?
Fabio. Not so many, sir,
As some that are of the most dangerous.
Aur. Among the rest this girl, Lisandro’s daughter,
As you and I know, Fabio, to our cost:
But now convicted and condemn’d is safe
From troubling us or Antioch any more.
Come, such good service asks substantial thanks;
What shall it be?
Fabio. No other, if you please,
Than my son Floro’s liberation,
Whom not without good reason for so long
You keep under the city’s lock and key.
Aur. As my own Lelio, and for a like cause;
Who both distracted by her witchery
Turn’d from fast friends to deadly enemies,
And, in each other’s lives, so aim’d at ours.
But no more chance of further quarrel now
For one whom Death anticipates for bride
Ere they again gird weapon at their side,
Set them both free forthwith.—

[Exit Fabio.

This cursèd woman whose fair face and foul

Behaviour was the city’s talk and trouble,
Now proved a sorceress, is well condemn’d;
Not only for my sake and Fabio’s,
But for all Antioch, whose better youth
She might, like ours, have carried after her
Through lust and duel into blasphemy.

Re-enter Fabio with Lelio and Floro.

 Lelio. Once more, sir, at your feet—
Aur. Up, both of you.
Floro and Lelio, you understand
What I have done was of no testy humour,
But for three several sakes—
Your own, your fathers’, and the city’s peace.
Henceforward, by this seasonable use
Of public law for private purpose check’d,
Your fiery blood to better service turn.
Take hands, be friends; the cause of quarrel gone—
Lelio. The cause of quarrel gone!—
Aur. Be satisfied;
You will know better by and bye; meanwhile
Taking upon my word that so it is;
Which were it not indeed, you were not here
To doubt.
Floro (aside). Oh flimsy respite of revenge!—
Aur. And now the business of the day well crown’d
With this so happy reconciliation,
You and I, Fabio, to our homes again,
Our homes once more, replenish’d with the peace
We both have miss’d so long.—What noise is that?
(Cries without.) Stop him! A madman! Stop him!—
Aur. What is it, Fabio?
Fabio. One like mad indeed,
In a strange garb, with flaring eyes, and hair
That streams behind him as he flies along,
Dragging a cloud of rabble after him.
Aur. This is no place for either—shut the doors,
And post the soldiers to keep peace without—
(Cries without.) Stop him!
Floro and Lelio. ’Tis Cipriano!—
Aur. Cipriano!—
Enter Cipriano.
 Cipriano. Ay, Cipriano, Cipriano’s self,
Heretofore mad as you that call him so,
Now first himself.—Noble Aurelio,
Who sway’st the sword of Rome in Antioch
And you, companions of my youthful love
And letters; you grave senate ranged above;
And you whose murmuring multitude below
Do make the marble hall of justice rock
From base to capital—hearken unto me:
Yes, I am Cipriano: I am he
So long and strangely lost, now strangely found—
The famous doctor of your schools, renown’d
Not Antioch only but the world about
For learning’s prophet-paragon forsooth;
Who long pretending to provide the truth
For other men in fields where never true
Wheat, but a crop of mimic darnel grew,
Reap’d nothing for himself but doubt, doubt, doubt.
Then ’twas that looking with despair and ruth
Over the blasted harvest of my youth,
I saw Justina: saw, and put aside
The barren Pallas for a mortal bride
Divinelier fair than she is feign’d to be:
But in whose deep-entempled chastity,
That look’d down holy cold upon my fire,
Lived eyes that but re-doubled vain desire.
Till this new passion, that more fiercely prey’d
Upon the wither’d spirit of dismay’d
Ambition, swiftly by denial blew
To fury that, transcending all control,
I made away the ruin of my soul
To one whom no chance tempest at my feet
In the mid tempest of temptation threw.
Who blinding me with the double deceit
Of loftier aspiration and more low
Than mortal or immortal man should owe
Fulfill’d for me, myself for his I bound;
hh dd h dd k l d
With him and death and darkness closeted
In yonder mountain, while about its head
The sun his garland of the seasons wound,
In the dark school of magic I so read,
And wrought to such a questionable power
The black forbidden art I travail’d in,
That though the solid mountain from his base
With all his forest I might counterplace,
I could not one sweet solitary flower
Of beauty to my magic passion win,
Because her God was with her in that hour
To guard her virtue more than mountain-fast:
That only God, whom all my learning past
Fail’d to divine, but from the very foe
That would have kept Him from me come to know
I come to you, to witness and make known:
One God, eternal, absolute, alone;
Of whom Christ Jesus—Jesus Christ, I say—
And, Antioch, open all your ears to-day—
Of that one Godhead one authentic ray,
Vizor’d awhile his Godhead in man’s make,
Man’s sin and death upon Himself to take;
For man made man; by man unmade and slain
Upon the cross that for mankind He bore—
Dead—buried—and in three-days ris’n again
To His hereditary glory, bearing
All who with Him on earth His sorrow sharing
With Him shall dwell in glory evermore.
And all the gods I worship’d heretofore,
And all that you now worship and adore,
From thundering Zeus to cloven-footed Pan,
But lies and idols, by the hand of man
Of brass and stone—fit emblems as they be,
With ears that hear not; eyes that cannot see;
And multitude where only One can be—
From man’s own lewd imagination built;
By that same devil held to that old guilt
Who tempted me to new. To whom indeed
 o te pted e to e o o deed
If with my sin and blood myself I fee’d
For ever his—that bond of sin and blood
I trust to cancel in the double flood
Of baptism past, and the quick martyrdom
To which with this confession I am come.
Oh delegate of Cæsar to devour
The little flock of Jesus Christ! Behold
One lost sheep just admitted to the fold
Through the pure stream that rolling down the same
Mountain in which I sinn’d, and as I came
By holy hands administer’d, to-day
Shall wash the mountain of my sin away.
Lo, here I stand for judgment; by the blow
Of sudden execution, or such slow
Death as the devil shall, to maintain his lies,
By keeping life alive in death, devise.
Hack, rack, dismember, burn—or crucify,
Like Him who died to find me; Him that I
Will die to find; for whom, with whom, to die
Is life; and life without, and all his lust,
But dust and ashes, dust and ashes, dust—
(He falls senseless to the ground.)
 Aurelio (after a long pause). So public and audacious blasphemy
Demands as instant vengeance. Wretched man,
Arise and hear your sentence—
Lelio. Oh, sir, sir!
You speak to ice and marble—Cipriano!
Oh look’d for long, and best for ever lost!
But he is mad—he knows not what he says—
You would not, surely, on a madman visit
What only sane confession makes a crime?
Aur. I never know how far such blasphemy,
Which seems to spread like wild-fire in the world,
Be fault or folly: only this I know,
I dare not disobey the stern decree
That Cæsar makes my office answer for.
Especially when one is led away
Of such persuasion and authority,
Still drawing after him the better blood
Of Antioch, to better or to worse.
Lelio. Cipriano! Cipriano! Yet, pray the gods
He be past hearing me!
Fabio (to Aurelio). Sir, in your ear—
Justina’s hour is come; and through the room
Where she was doom’d, she passes to her doom.
Aur. Let us be gone; they must not look on her
Nor know she is to die until ‘to die’
Be past predicament. Here let her wait,
Till he she drew along with her to sin
Revive to share with her its punishment.
Come, Lelio—come, Floro—be assured
I loved and honour’d this man as yourselves
Have honour’d him—but now—
Lelio. Nay, sir, but—
Aur. Nay,
Not I, but Cæsar, Lelio. Come away.
[Exeunt. Then Justina is brought in by soldiers, and left alone.
 Just. All gone—all silence—and the sudden stroke,
Whose only mercy I besought, delay’d
To make my pang the fiercer.—What is here?—
Dead?—By the doom perhaps I am to die,
And laid across the threshold of the road
To trip me up with terror—Yet not so,
If but the life, once lighted here, has flown
Up to the living Centre that my own
Now trembles to!—God help him, breathing still?—
—Cipriano!—
Cipr. Ay, I am ready—I can rise—
Is my time come?—Oh, God!
Have I repented and confess’d too late,
And this terrible witness of my crime
Stands at the door of death from which it came
To draw me deeper—
Just. Cipriano!
Cipr. Yet
Not yet disfeatured—nor the voice—
Oh, if not That—this time unsummon’d—come
To take me with you where I raised you from—
Once more—once more—assure me!—
Justina (taking his hand). Cipriano!—
Cipr. And this, too, surely, is a living hand:
Though cold, oh, cold indeed—but yet, but yet,
Not dust and ashes, dust and ashes—
Just. No—
But soon to be—
Cipr. But soon—but soon to be—
But not as then?—
Just. I understand you not—
Cipr. I scarce myself—I must have been asleep—
But now not dreaming?
 Just. No, not dreaming.
Cipr. No—
This is the judgment-hall of Antioch,
In which—I scarcely mind how long ago—
Is sentence pass’d on me?—
Just. This is indeed
The judgment-hall of Antioch; but why
You here, and what the judgment you await,
I know not—
Cipr. No.—But stranger yet to me
Why you yourself, Justina,—Oh my God!—
What, all your life long giving God his due,
Is treason unto Cæsar?—
Just. Ay, Cipriano—
Against his edict having crept inside
God’s fold with that good Shepherd for my guide,
My Saviour Jesus Christ!
Cipr. My Saviour too,
And Shepherd—oh, the only good and true
Shepherd and Saviour—
Just. You confess Him! You
Confess Him, Cipriano!
Cipr. With my blood:
Which being all to that confession pledged,
Now waits but to be paid.
Just. Oh, we shall die,
And go to heaven together!
Cipr. Amen! Amen!—
And yet—
Just. You do not fear—and yet no shame—
What I have faced so long, that present dread
Is almost lost in long anticipation—
Cipr. I fear not for this mortal. Would to God
This guilty blood by which in part I trust
To pay the forfeit of my soul with Heaven
Would from man’s hand redeem the innocence
That such atonement needs not.
Just. Oh, to all
One faith and one atonement—
Cipr. But if both,
If both indeed must perish by the doom
That one deserves and cries for—Oh, Justina,
Who upward ever with the certain step
Of faith hast follow’d unrepress’d by sin;
Now that thy foot is almost on the floor
Of heaven, pray Him who opens thee the door,
Let with thee one repenting sinner in!
Just. What more am I? And were I close to Him
As he upon whose breast he lean’d on here,
No intercessor but Himself between
Himself and the worst sinner of us all—
If but repenting we believe in Him.
Cipr. I do believe—I do repent—my faith
Have sign’d in water, and will seal in blood—
Just. I have no other hope, but, in that, all.
Cipr. Oh hope that almost is accomplishment,
Believing all with nothing to repent!
Just. Oh, none so good as not to need—so bad
As not to find, His mercy. If you doubt
Because of your long dwelling in the darkness
To which the light was folly—oh ’twas shown
To the poor shepherd long before the wise;
And if to me, as simple—oh, not mine,
Not mine, oh God! the glory—nor ev’n theirs
From whom I drew it, and—Oh, Cipriano,
Methinks I see them bending from the skies
To take me up to them!
Cip Whithe o ld I
 Cipr. Whither could I
But into heaven’s remotest corner creep,
Where I might only but discern thee, lost
With those you love in glory—
Just. Hush! hush! hush!
These are wild words—if I so speak to one
So wise, while I am nothing—
But as you know—Oh, do not think of me,
But Him, into whose kingdom all who come
Are as His angels—
Cipr. Ay, but to come there!—
Where if all intercession, even thine,
Be vain—you say so—yet before we pass
The gate of death together, as we shall,—
If then to part—for ever, and for ever—
Unless with your forgiveness—
Just. I forgive!
Still I, and I, again! Oh, Cipriano,
Pardon and intercession both alike
With Him alone; and had I to forgive—
Did not He pray upon the cross for those
Who slew Him—as I hope to do on mine
For mine—He bids us bless our enemies
And persecutors; which I think, I think,
You were not, Cipriano—why do you shudder?—
Save in pursuit of that—if vain to me,
Now you know all—
Cipr. I now know all—but you
Not that, which asking your forgiveness for,
I dare not name to you, for fear the hand
I hold as anchor-fast to, break away,
And I drive back to hell upon a blast
That roar’d behind me to these very doors,
But stopt—ev’n in the very presence stopt,
That most condemns me his.
Just. Alas, alas,
 , ,
Again all wild to me. The time draws short—
Look not to me, but Him tow’rd whom alone
Sin is, and pardon comes from—
Cipr. Oh, Justina,
You know not how enormous is my sin—
Just. I know, not as His mercy infinite.
Cipr. To Him—to thee—to Him through thee—
Just. ’Tis written,
Not all the sand of ocean, nor the stars
Of heaven so many as His mercies are.
Cipr. What! ev’n for one who, mad with pouring vows
Into an unrelenting human ear,
Gave himself up to Antichrist—the Fiend—
Though then for such I knew him not—to gain
By darkness all that love had sought in vain!
—Speak to me—if but that hereafter I
Shall never, never, hear your voice again—
Speak to me—
Just. (after a long pause). By the Saviour on His cross
A sinner hung who but at that last hour
Cried out to be with Him; and was with Him
In Paradise ere night.
Cipr. But was his sin
As mine enormous?—
Just. Shall your hope be less,
Offering yourself for Christ’s sake on that cross
Which the other only suffer’d for his sin?
Oh, when we come to perish, side by side,
Look but for Him between us crucified,
And call to Him for mercy; and, although
Scarlet, your sin shall be as white as snow!
Cipr. Ev’n as you speak, yourself, though yet yourself,
In that full glory that you saw reveal’d
With those you love transfigured, and your voice
With those you love transfigured, and your voice
As from immeasurable altitude
Descending, tell me that, my shame and sin
Quench’d in the death that opens wide to you
The gate, ev’n this great sinner shall pass through,
With Him, with them, with thee!—
Just. Glory to God!—
Oh blest assurance on the very verge
That death is swallow’d up in victory!
And hark! the step of death is at the door—
Courage!—Almighty God through Jesus Christ
Pardon your sins and mine, and as a staff
Guide and support us through the terrible pass
That leads us to His rest!—
Cipr. My own beloved!
Whose hand—Oh let it be no sin to say it!—
Is as the staff that God has put in mine—
To lead me through the shadow—yet ev’n now—
Ev’n now—at this last terrible moment—
Which, to secure my being with thee, thee
Forbids to stand between my Judge and me,
And in a few more moments, soul and soul
May read each other as an open scroll—
Yet, wilt thou yet believe me not so vile
To thee, to Him who made thee what thou art,
Till desperation of the only heart
I ever sigh’d for, by I knew not then
How just alienation, drove me down
To that accursèd thing?
Just. My Cipriano!
Dost thou remember, in the lighter hour—
Then when my heart, although you saw it not,
All the while yearn’d to thee across the gulf
That yet it dared not pass—my telling thee
That only Death, which others disunites,
Should ever make us one? Behold! and now
The hour is come, and I redeem my vow.
(Here the play may finish: but for any one who would follow Calderon to
the end,—
Enter Fabio with Guard, who lead away Cipriano and Justina. Manent
Eusebio, Julian, and Citizens.)
 Citizen 1. Alas! alas! alas! So young a pair!
And one so very wise!
Cit. 2. And one so fair!
Cit. 3. And both as calmly walking to their death
As others to a marriage festival.
Julian. Looking as calm, at least, Eusebio,
As when, do you remember, at the last
Great festival of Zeus, we left him sitting
Upon the hill-side with his books?
Eusebio. I think
Almost the last we saw of him: so soon,
Flinging his studies and his scholars by,
He went away into that solitude
Which ended in this madness, and now death
With her he lost his wits for.
Cit. 1. And has found
In death whom living he pursued in vain.
Cit. 2. And after death, as they believe; and so
Thus cheerfully to meet it, if the scaffold
Divorce them to eternal union.
Cit. 3. Strange that so wise a man
Should fall into so fond a superstition
Which none but ignorance has taken up.
Cit. 1. Oh, love, you know, like time works wonders.
Eusebio. Well—
Antioch will never see so great a scholar.
Julian. Nor we so courteous a Professor—
I would not see my dear old master die
Were all the wits he lost my legacy.
Citizens talking.
One says that, as they went out hand in hand,
He saw a halo like about the moon
About their head and moving as they went
About their head, and moving as they went.
—— I saw it—
—— Fancy! fancy!—
—— Any how,
They leave it very dark behind them—Thunder!
—— They talk of madness and of blasphemy;
Neither of these, I think, looking much guilty.
—— And he, at any rate, I still maintain,
Least like to be deluded by the folly
For which the new religion is condemn’d.
—— Before his madness, certainly: but love
First crazed him, as I told you.
—— Well, if mad,
How guilty?
—— Hush! hush! These are dangerous words.
—— Be not you bitten by this madness, neighbour.
Rome’s arm is long.
—— Ay, and some say her ears.
—— Then, ev’n if bitten, bark not—Thunder again!
—— And what unnatural darkness!
—— Well—a storm—
—— They say, you know, he was a sorcerer—
Indeed we saw the mystic dress he wore
All wrought with figures of astrology;
Nay, he confess’d himself as much; and now
May raise a storm to save—
—— There was a crash!
—— A bolt has fallen somewhere—the walls shake—
—— And the ground under—
—— Save us, Zeus—
V i A
 Voices. Away—
The roof is falling in upon us—
(The wall at the back falls in, and discovers a scaffold with Cipriano
and Justina dead, and Lucifer above them.)

Lucifer. Stay!—
And hearken to what I am doom’d to tell.
I am the mighty minister of hell
You mis-call heaven, and of the hellish crew
Of those false gods you worship for the True;
Who, to revenge her treason to the blind
Idolatry that has hoodwinkt mankind,
And his, whose halting wisdom after-knew
What her diviner virtue fore-divined,
By devilish plot and artifices thought
Each of them by the other to have caught;
But, thwarted by superior will, those eyes
That, by my fuel fed, had been a flame
To light them both to darkness down, became
As stars to lead together to the skies,
By such a doom as expiates his sin,
And her pure innocence lets sooner in
To that eternal bliss where, side by side,
They reign at His right hand for whom they died.
While I, convicted in my own despite
Thus to bear witness to the eternal light
Of which I lost, and they have won the crown,
Plunge to my own eternal darkness down.

Húndese.
SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE
OF

A DRAMA
TAKEN FROM
CALDERON’S “LA VIDA ES SUEÑO”
For Calderon’s Drama sufficient would seem
The title he chose for it—“Life is a Dream;”
Two words of the motto now filch’d are enough
For the impudent mixture they label—“Such stuff!”

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

Basilio King of Poland.

Segismund his Son.
Astolfo his Nephew.
Estrella his Niece.
Clotaldo a General in Basilio’s Service.
Rosaura a Muscovite Lady.
Fife her Attendant.
 Chamberlain, Lords in waiting, Officers, Soldiers, etc., in Basilio’s
Service.

The Scene of the first and third Acts lies on the Polish frontier: of
the second Act, in Warsaw.

ACT I

Scene I.—A pass of rocks, over which a storm is rolling away,

and the sun setting: in the foreground, half-way down, a
fortress.

Enter first from the topmost rock Rosaura, as from horse-back, in

man’s attire; and, after her, Fife.[12]
 Rosaura. There, four-footed Fury, blast-
-engender’d brute, without the wit
Of brute, or mouth to match the bit
Of man—art satisfied at last?
Who, when thunder roll’d aloof,
Tow’rd the spheres of fire your ears
Pricking, and the granite kicking
Into lightning with your hoof,
Among the tempest-shatter’d crags
Shattering your luckless rider
Back into the tempest pass’d?
There then lie to starve and die,
Or find another Phaeton
Mad-mettled as yourself; for I,
Wearied, worried, and for-done,
Alone will down the mountain try,
That knits his brows against the sun.
Fife (as to his mule). There, thou mis-begotten thing,
Long-ear’d lightning, tail’d tornado,
Griffin-hoof-in hurricano,—
(I might swear till I were almost
Hoarse with roaring Asonante)
Who forsooth because your betters
Would begin to kick and fling—
You forthwith your noble mind
Must prove, and kick me off behind,
Tow’rd the very centre whither
Gravity was most inclined.
There where you have made your bed
In it lie; for, wet or dry,
Let what will for me betide you,
Burning, blowing, freezing, hailing;
Famine waste you: devil ride you:
Tempest baste you black and blue:—
(To Rosaura.) There! I think in downright railing,
I can hold my own with you.
Ros. Ah, my good Fife, whose merry loyal pipe,
Come weal, come woe, is never out of tune—
What, you in the same plight too?
Fife. Ay;
And madam—sir—hereby desire,
When you your own adventures sing
Another time in lofty rhyme,
You don’t forget the trusty squire
Who went with you Don-quixoting.
Ros. Well, my good fellow—to leave Pegasus,
Who scarce can serve us than our horses worse—
They say no one should rob another of
The single satisfaction he has left
Of singing his own sorrows; one so great,
So says some great philosopher, that trouble
Were worth encount’ring only for the sake
Of weeping over—what perhaps you know
Some poet calls the ‘luxury of woe.’
Fife. Had I the poet or philosopher
In place of her that kick’d me off to ride,
I’d test his theory upon his hide.
But no bones broken, madam—sir, I mean?—
Ros. A scratch here that a handkerchief will heal—
And you?—
Fife. A scratch in quiddity, or kind:
But not in ‘quo’—my wounds are all behind.
But, as you say, to stop this strain,
Which, somehow, once one’s in the vein,
Comes clattering after—there again!—
What are we twain—deuce take ’t!—we two,
I mean, to do—drench’d through and through—
Oh, I shall choke of rhymes, which I believe
Are all that we shall have to live on here
Are all that we shall have to live on here.
Ros. What, is our victual gone too?—
Fife. Ay, that brute
Has carried all we had away with her,
Clothing, and cate, and all.
Ros. And now the sun,
Our only friend and guide, about to sink
Under the stage of earth.
Fife. And enter Night,
With Capa y Espada—and—pray heaven!—
With but her lanthorn also.
Ros. Ah, I doubt
To-night, if any, with a dark one—or
Almost burnt out after a month’s consumption.
Well! well or ill, on horseback or afoot,
This is the gate that lets me into Poland;
And, sorry welcome as she gives a guest
Who writes his own arrival on her rocks
In his own blood—
Yet better on her stony threshold die,
Than live on unrevenged in Muscovy.
Fife. Oh what a soul some women have—I mean,
Some men—
Ros. Oh, Fife, Fife, as you love me, Fife,
Make yourself perfect in that little part,
Or all will go to ruin!
Fife. Oh, I will,
Please God we find some one to try it on.
But, truly, would not any one believe
Some fairy had exchanged us as we lay
Two tiny foster-children in one cradle?
Ros. Well, be that as it may, Fife, it reminds me
Of what perhaps I should have thought before,
 p p g ,
But better late than never—You know I love you,
As you, I know, love me, and loyally
Have follow’d me thus far in my wild venture:
Well! now then—having seen me safe thus far—
Safe if not wholly sound—over the rocks
Into the country where my business lies—
Why should not you return the way we came,
The storm all clear’d away, and, leaving me
(Who now shall want you, though not thank you, less,
Now that our horses gone) this side the ridge,
Find your way back to dear old home again;
While I—Come, come!—
What, weeping, my poor fellow?—
Fife. Leave you here
Alone—my Lady—Lord! I mean my Lord—
In a strange country—among savages—
Oh, now I know—you would be rid of me
For fear my stumbling speech—
Ros. Oh, no, no, no!—
I want you with me for a thousand sakes
To which that is as nothing—I myself
More apt to let the secret out myself
Without your help at all—Come, come, cheer up!
And if you sing again, ‘Come weal, come woe,’
Let it be that; for we will never part
Until you give the signal.
Fife. ’Tis a bargain.
Ros. Now to begin, then. ‘Follow, follow me,
You fairy elves that be.’
Fife. Ay, and go on—
Something of ‘following darkness like a dream,’
For that we’re after.
Ros. No, after the sun;
Trying to catch hold of his glittering skirts
Trying to catch hold of his glittering skirts
That hang upon the mountain as he goes.
Fife. Ah, he’s himself past catching—as you spoke
He heard what you were saying, and—just so—
Like some scared water-bird,
As we say in my country, dōve below.
Ros. Well, we must follow him as best we may.
Poland is no great country, and, as rich
In men and means, will but few acres spare
To lie beneath her barrier mountains bare.
We cannot, I believe, be very far
From mankind or their dwellings.
Fife. Send it so!
And well provided for man, woman, and beast.
No, not for beast. Ah, but my heart begins
To yearn for her—
Ros. Keep close, and keep your feet
From serving you as hers did.
Fife. As for beasts,
If in default of other entertainment,
We should provide them with ourselves to eat—
Bears, lions, wolves—
Ros. Oh, never fear.
Fife. Or else,
Default of other beasts, beastlier men,
Cannibals, Anthropophagi, bare Poles
Who never knew a tailor but by taste.
Ros. Look, look! Unless my fancy misconceive
With twilight—down among the rocks there, Fife—
Some human dwelling, surely—
Or think you but a rock torn from the rocks
In some convulsion like to-day’s, and perch’d
Quaintly among them in mock-masonry?
 Fife. Most likely that, I doubt.
Ros. No, no—for look!
A square of darkness opening in it—
Fife. Oh,
I don’t half like such openings!—
Ros. Like the loom
Of night from which she spins her outer gloom—
Fife. Lord, Madam, pray forbear this tragic vein
In such a time and place—
Ros. And now again
Within that square of darkness, look! a light
That feels its way with hesitating pulse,
As we do, through the darkness that it drives
To blacken into deeper night beyond.
Fife. In which could we follow that light’s example,
As might some English Bardolph with his nose,
We might defy the sunset—Hark, a chain!
Ros. And now a lamp; a lamp! And now the hand
That carries it.
Fife. Oh, Lord! that dreadful chain!
Ros. And now the bearer of the lamp; indeed
As strange as any in Arabian tale,
So giant-like, and terrible, and grand,
Spite of the skin he’s wrapt in.
Fife. Why, ’tis his own:
Oh, ’tis some wild man of the woods; I’ve heard
They build and carry torches—
Ros. Never Ape
Bore such a brow before the heavens as that—
Chain’d as you say too!—
Fife Oh that dreadful chain!
 Fife. Oh, that dreadful chain!
Ros. And now he sets the lamp down by his side,
And with one hand clench’d in his tangled hair
And with a sigh as if his heart would break—
[During this Segismund has entered from the fortress, with a torch.
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookultra.com