In
this he held that, as all islands have been at their discovery found
peopled by blacks, we must needs believe that humanity was first created
of that color. Mrs. Johnson could not show us her husband's work (a sole
copy in the library of an English gentleman at Port au Prince is not to be
bought for money), but she often developed its arguments to the lady of
the house; and one day, with a great show of reluctance, and many protests
that no personal slight was meant, let fall the fact that Mr. Johnson
believed the white race descended from Gehazi the leper, upon whom the
leprosy of Naaman fell when the latter returned by Divine favor to his
original blackness. "And he went out from his presence a leper as white as
snow," said Mrs. Johnson, quoting irrefutable Scripture. "Leprosy,
leprosy," she added thoughtfully,--"nothing but leprosy bleached you out."
It seems to me much in her praise that she did not exult in our taint and
degradation, as some white philosophers used to do in the opposite idea
that a part of the human family were cursed to lasting blackness and
slavery in Ham and his children, but even told us of a remarkable approach
to whiteness in many of her own offspring.
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