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Transcriber's Note: This document is the text of Trial and Triumph. Any
                    bracketed notations such as [?], and those inserting
                    letters or other comments are from the original text.


Transcriber's Note About the Author:
Francis Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was born to free parents in
Baltimore, Maryland. Orphaned at three, she was raised by her uncle, a
teacher and radical advocate for civil rights. She attended the Academy
for Negro Youth and was educated as a teacher. She became a professional
lecturer, activist, suffragette, poet, essayist, novelist, and the author
of the first published short story written by an African-American. Her
work spanned more than sixty years.




TRIAL AND TRIUMPH

A Rediscovered Novel by

Frances E.W. Harper

Edited by Frances Smith Foster






Chapter I


"Oh, that child! She is the very torment of my life. I have been the
mother of six children, and all of them put together, never gave me as
much trouble as that girl. I don't know what will ever become of her."

"What is the matter now, Aunt Susan? What has Annette been doing?"

"Doing! She is always doing something; everlastingly getting herself
into trouble with some of the neighbors. She is the most mischievous and
hard-headed child I ever saw."

"Well what has she been doing this morning which has so upset you?"

"Why, I sent her to the grocery to have the oil can filled, and after
she came back she had not been in the house five minutes before there
came such an uproar from Mrs. Larkins', my next door neighbor, that I
thought her house was on fire, but----"

"Instead of that her tongue was on fire, and I know what that means."

"Yes, that's just it, and I don't wonder. That little minx sitting up
there in the corner looking so innocent, stopped to pour oil on her
clean steps. Now you know yourself what an aggravating thing that must
have been."

"Yes, it must have been, especially as Mrs. Larkins is such a nice
housekeeper and takes such pride in having everything neat and nice
about her. How did you fix up matters with her."

"I have not fixed them up at all. Mrs. Larkins only knows one cure for
bad children, and that is beating them, and she always blames me for
spoiling Annette, but I hardly know what to do with her. I've scolded
and scolded till my tongue is tired, whipping don't seem to do her a bit
of good, and I hate to put her out among strangers for fear that they
will not treat her right, for after all she is very near to me. She is
my poor, dead Lucy's child. Sometimes when I get so angry with her that
I feel as though I could almost shake the life out of her, the thought
of her dying mother comes back to me and it seems to me as if I could
see her eyes looking so wistfully on the child and turning so trustingly
to me and saying, 'Mother, when I am gone won't you take care of
Annette, and try to keep her with you?' And then all the anger dies out
of me. Poor child! I don't know what is going to become of her when my
head is laid low. I'm afraid she is born for trouble. Nobody will ever
put up with her as I do. She has such an unhappy disposition. She is not
like any of my children ever were."

"Yes. I've often noticed that she does seem different from other
children. She never seems light-hearted and happy."

"Yes, that is so. She reminds me so of poor Lucy before she was born.
She even moans in her sleep like she used to do. It was a dark day when
Frank Miller entered my home and Lucy became so taken up with him. It
seemed to me as if my poor girl just worshiped him. I did not feel that
he was all right, and I tried to warn my dear child of danger, but what
could an old woman like me do against him with his handsome looks and
oily tongue."

"Yes," said her neighbor soothingly, "you have had a sad time, but
still we cannot recall the dead past, and it is the living present with
which we have to deal. Annette needs wise guidance, a firm hand and a
loving heart to deal with her. To spoil her at home is only to prepare
her for misery abroad."

"I am afraid that I am not equal to the task."

"If any man lack wisdom we are taught to ask it of One who giveth
liberally to all men and upbraideth none. There would be so much less
stumbling if we looked earnestly within for 'the light which lighteth
every man that cometh into the world.'"

"Well," said Mrs. Harcourt, Annette's grandmother, "there is one thing
about Annette that I like. She is very attentive to her books. If you
want to keep that child out of mischief just put a book in her hand; but
then she has her living to get and she can't get it by nursing her hands
and reading books. She has got to work like the rest of us."

"But why not give her a good education? Doors are open to her which were
closed against us. This is a day of light and knowledge. I don't know
much myself, but I mean to give my girls a chance. I don't believe in
saying, let my children do as I have done, when I think some of us have
done poorly enough digging and delving from morning till night. I don't
believe the good Lord ever sent anybody into his light and beautiful
world to be nothing but a drudge, and I just think it is because some
take it so easy that others, who will do, have to take it so hard."

"It always makes my blood boil," said a maiden lady who was present, "to
see a great hulk of a man shambling around complaining of hard times,
and that he can't get work, when his wife is just working herself down
to the grave to keep up the family." I asked Mrs. Johnson, who just
lives in the wash tub and is the main stay of her family, what would her
husband do if she were to die? and she said, 'get another wife.' Now, I
just think she has spoiled that man and if she dies first, I hope that
he will never find another woman to tread in her footsteps. He ought to
have me to deal with. When he got through with me he would never want
to laze around another woman."

"I don't think he ever would," said Mrs. Harcourt, while a gleam of
humor sparkled in her eye. Her neighbor was a maiden lady who always
knew how to manage other people's husbands, but had never succeeded in
getting one of her own, and not having any children herself understood
perfectly well how to rate other people's.

Just then a knock was heard at the door and Mr. Thomas, Annette's former
school teacher, entered the room. After an exchange of courtesies he
asked, "How does Annette come on with her new teacher?"

"I have not heard any complaint," said Mrs. Harcourt. "At first Mrs.
Joseph's girl did not want to sit with Annette, but she soon got over it
when she saw how well the other girls treated Annette and how pleasant
the teacher was to her. Mr. Scott, who has been so friendly to us, told
us not to mind her; that her mother had been an ignorant servant girl,
who had married a man with a little money; that she was still ignorant,
loud and [dressy?] and liked to put on airs. The nearer the beggar the
greater the prejudice."

"I think it is true," said Mr. Thomas. "If you apply those words, not to
condition, but human souls, for none but beggarly souls would despise a
man because of circumstances over which he had no control; noble,
large-hearted men and women are never scornful. Contempt and ridicule
are the weapons of weak souls. I am glad however, that Annette is
getting on so well. I hope that she will graduate at the head of her
class, with high honors."

"What's the use of giving her so much education? there are no openings
for her here, and if she gets married she won't want it," and Mrs.
Harcourt sighed as she finished her sentence.

Mr. Thomas looked grave for a moment and then his face relaxed into a
smile. "Well, really, Mrs. Harcourt, that is not very complimentary to
us young men; do we have no need of intelligent and well educated
wives? I think our race needs educated mothers for the home more than we
do trained teachers for the school room. Not that I would ignore or
speak lightly of the value of good colored teachers nor suggest as a
race, that we can well afford to do without them; but to-day, if it were
left to my decision, whether the education of the race should be placed
in the hands of the school teacher or the mothers and there was no other
alternative, I should, by all means, decide for the education of the
race through its motherhood rather than through its teachers."

"But we poor mothers had no chance. We could not teach our children."

"I think you could teach some of them more than they wish to learn; but
I must go now; at some other time we will talk on this subject."




Chapter II


"Oh, Annette!" said Mrs. Harcourt, turning to her granddaughter after
Mr. Thomas had left the door; "What makes you so naughty? Why did you
pour that oil on Mrs. Larkin's steps; didn't you know it was wrong?"

Annette stood silent looking like a guilty culprit.

"Why don't you answer me; what makes you behave so bad?"

"I don't know, grandma, I 'specs I did it for the devil. The preacher
said the devil makes people do bad things."

"The preacher didn't say any such thing; he said the devil tempts people
to be bad, but you are not to mind every thing the devil tells you to
do, if you do, you will get yourself into a lot of trouble."

"Well, grandma, Mrs. Larkins is so mean and cross and she is always
telling tales on me and I just did it for fun."

"Well, that is very poor fun. You deserve a good whipping, and I've a
great mind to give it to you now."

"Why don't she let me alone; she is all the time trying to get you to
beat me. She's a spiteful old thing anyhow. I don't like her, and I know
she don't like me."

"Hush Annette, you must not talk that way of any one so much older than
yourself. When I was a child I wouldn't have talked that way about any
old person. Don't let me hear you talk that way again. You will never
rest till I give you a good whipping."

"Yes ma'm," said Annette very demurely.

"Oh, Annette!" said her grandmother with a sudden burst of feeling. "You
do give me so much trouble. You give me more worry than all my six
children put together; but there is always one scabby sheep in the flock
and you will be that one. Now get ready for school and don't let me hear
any more complaints about you; I am not going to let you worry me to
death."

Annette took up her bonnet and glided quietly out of the door, glad to
receive instead of the threatened whipping a liberal amount of talk, and
yet the words struck deeper than blows. Her own grandmother had
prophesied evil things of her. She was to be the scabby sheep of the
flock. The memory of the blows upon her body might have passed soon away
after the pain and irritation of the infliction were over, but that
inconsiderate prophecy struck deep into her heart and left its impress
upon her unfolding life. Without intending it, Mrs. Harcourt had struck
a blow at the child's self-respect; one of the things which she should
have strengthened, even if it was "ready to die." Annette had entered
life sadly handicapped. She was the deserted child of a selfish and
unprincipled man and a young mother whose giddiness and lack of
self-control had caused her to trail the robes of her womanhood in the
dust. With such an ante-natal history how much she needed judicious, but
tender, loving guidance. In that restless, sensitive and impulsive child
was the germ of a useful woman with a warm, loving heart, ready to
respond to human suffering, capable of being faithful in friendship and
devoted in love. Before that young life with its sad inheritance seemed
to lay a future of trial, and how much, humanly speaking, seemed to
depend upon the right training of that life and the development within
her of self-control, self-reliance and self-respect. There was no
mother's heart for her to nestle upon in her hours of discouragement and
perplexity; no father's strong, loving arms to shelter and defend her;
no sister to brighten her life with joyous companionship, and no brother
to champion her through the early and impossible period of ripening
womanhood. Her grandmother was kind to her, but not very tender and
loving. Her struggle to keep the wolf from the door had absorbed her
life, and although she was neither hard nor old, yet she was not
demonstrative in her affections, and to her a restless child was an
enigma she did not know how to solve. If the child were hungry or cold
she could understand physical wants, but for the hunger of the heart she
had neither sympathy nor comprehension. Fortunately Annette had found a
friend who understood her better than her grandmother, and who, looking
beneath the perverseness of the child, saw in her rich possibilities,
and would often speak encouragingly to her. Annette early developed a
love for literature and poetry and would sometimes try to make rhymes
and string verses together and really Mrs. Lasette thought that she had
talent or even poetic genius and ardently wished that it might be
cultivated and rightly directed; but it never entered the minds of her
grandmother and aunts that in their humble home was a rarely gifted soul
destined to make music which would set young hearts to thrilling with
higher hopes and loftier aspirations.

Mrs. Lasette had been her teacher before she married. After she became a
wife and mother, instead of becoming entirely absorbed in a round of
household cares and duties, the moment the crown of motherhood fell upon
her, as she often said, she had poured a new interest into the welfare
of her race.[1] With these feelings she soon became known as a friend
and helper in the community in which she lived. Young girls learned to
look to her for council and encouragement amid the different passages of
their [lives?] sometimes with blushing cheeks they whispered in to her
ears tender secrets they did not always bring to their near relatives,
and young men about to choose their life work, often came to consult her
and to all her heart was responsive. With this feeling of confidence in
her judgment, Mr. Thomas had entered her home after leaving Mrs.
Harcourt's, educating himself for a teacher. He had spent several years
in the acquisition of knowledge and was proving himself an acceptable
and conscientious teacher, when the change came which deprived him of
his school, by blending his pupils in the different ward schools of the
city. Public opinion which moves slowly, had advanced far enough to
admit the colored children into the different schools, irrespective of
color, but it was not prepared, except in a few places to admit the
colored teachers as instructors in the schools. "What are you going to
do next?" inquired Mrs. Lasette of Mr. Thomas as he seated himself
somewhat wearily by the fire. "I hardly know, I am all at sea, but I am
going to be like the runaway slave who, when asked, 'Where is your
pass?' raised his fist and said 'Dem is my passes,' and if 'I don't see
an opening I will make one.'"

"Why don't you go into the ministry? When Mr. Pugh failed in his
examination he turned his attention to the ministry, and it is said that
he is succeeding admirably."

"Mrs. Lasette, I was brought up to respect the institutions of religion,
and not to lay rash hands on sacred things, and while I believe that
every man should preach Christ by an upright life, and chaste
conversation, yet I think one of the surest ways to injure a Church, and
to make the pulpit lose its power over the rising generation, is for men
without a true calling, or requisite qualifications to enter the
ministry because they have failed in some other avocation and find in
preaching an open door to success."

"But they often succeed."

"How?"

"Why by getting into good churches, increasing their congregations and
paying off large church debts." "And is that necessarily success? We
need in the Church men who can be more than financiers and who can
attract large congregations. We need earnest thoughtful Christly men,
who will be more anxious to create and develop moral earnestness than to
excite transient emotions. Now there is Rev. Mr. Lamson who was educated
in R. College. I have heard him preach to, as I thought, an honest, well
meaning, but an ignorant congregation, and instead of lifting them to
more rational forms of worship, he tried to imitate them and made a
complete failure. He even tried to moan as they do in worship but it
didn't come out natural."

"Of course it did not. These dear old people whose moaning during
service, seems even now so pitiful and weird, I think learned to mourn
out in prayers, thoughts and feelings wrung from their agonizing hearts,
which they did not dare express when they were forced to have their
meetings under the surveillance of a white man."

"It is because I consider the ministry the highest and most sacred
calling, that I cannot, nay I dare not, rush into it unless I feel
impelled by the strongest and holiest motives."

"You are right and I think just such men as you ought to be in the
ministry."

"Are you calling me?" "I wish it were in my power." "I am glad that it
is not, I think there are more in the ministry now than magnify their
calling."

"But Mr. Thomas[2] are you not looking on the dark side of the question?
you must judge of the sun, not by its spots, but by its brightness."

"Oh I did not mean to say that the ministry is crowded with unworthy
men, who love the fleece more than the flock. I believe that there are
in the ministry a large number who are the salt of the earth and whose
life work bears witness to their fitness. But unfortunately there are
men who seem so lacking in reverence for God, by their free handling of
sacred things; now I think one of the great wants of our people is more
reverence for God who is above us, and respect for the man who is beside
us, and I do hope that our next minister will be a good man, of active
brain, warm heart and Christly sympathies, who will be among us a
living, moral, and spiritual force, and who will be willing to teach us
on the Bible plan of 'line upon line, precept upon precept, here a
little there a little.'"

"I hope he will be; it is said that brother Lomax our new minister is an
excellent young man."

"Well I hope that we will not fail to receive him as an apostle and try
to hold up his hands."

"I hope so. I think that to be called of God to be an ambassador for
Christ, to help him build the kingdom of righteousness, love and peace,
amid the misery, sin and strife, is the highest and most blessed
position that a man can hold, and because I esteem the calling so highly
I would not rush into it unless I felt divinely commissioned."




Chapter III


Mrs. Harcourt was a Southern woman by birth, who belonged to that class
of colored people whose freedom consisted chiefly in not being the
chattels of the dominant race--a class to whom little was given and from
whom much was required. She was naturally bright and intelligent, but
had come up in a day when the very book of the Christian's law was to
her a sealed volume; but if she had not been educated through the aid of
school books and blackboards, she had obtained that culture of manners
and behavior which comes through contact with well-bred people, close
observation and a sense of self-respect and self-reliance, and when
deprived of her husband's help by an untimely death, she took up the
burden of life bravely and always tried to keep up what she called "a
stiff upper lip." Feeling the cramping of Southern life, she became
restive under the privations and indignities which were heaped upon free
persons of color, and at length she and her husband broke up their home
and sold out at a pecuniary sacrifice to come North, where they could
breathe free air and have educational privileges for their children. But
while she was strong and healthy her husband, whose health was not very
firm, soon succumbed to the change of climate and new modes of living
and left Mrs. Harcourt a stranger and widow in a strange land with six
children dependent on her for bread and shelter: but during her short
sojourn in the North[3] she had enlisted the sympathy and respect of
kind friends, who came to her relief and helped her to help herself, the
very best assistance they could bestow upon her. Capable and efficient,
she found no difficulty in getting work for herself and older children,
who were able to add their quota to the support of the family by running
errands, doing odd jobs for the neighbors and helping their mother
between school hours. Nor did she lay all the household burdens on the
shoulders of the girls and leave her boys to the mercy of the pavement;
she tried to make her home happy and taught them all to have a share in
adding to its sunshine. "It makes boys selfish," she would say, "to have
their sisters do all the work and let the boys go scot-free. I don't
believe there would be so many trifling men if the boys were trained to
be more helpful at home and to feel more for their mothers and sisters."
All this was very well for the peace and sunshine of that home, but as
the children advanced in life the question came to her with painful
emphasis----"What can I do for the future of my boys and girls?" She was
not anxious to have them all professional men and school teachers and
government clerks, but she wanted each one to have some trade or calling
by which a respectable and comfortable living could be made; but first
she consulted their tastes and inclinations. Her youngest boy was very
fond of horses, but instead of keeping him in the city, where he was in
danger of getting too intimate with horse jockeys and stable boys, she
found a place for him with an excellent farmer, who, seeing the tastes
of the boy, took great interest in teaching him how to raise stock and
he became a skillful farmer. Her second son showed that he had some
mechanical skill and ingenuity and she succeeded in getting him a
situation with a first-class carpenter, and spared no pains to have him
well instructed in all the branches of carpentry, and would often say to
him, "John, don't do any sham work if you are going to be a carpenter;
be thorough in every thing you do and try to be the best carpenter in
A.P., and if you do your work better than others, you won't have to be
all the time going around advertising yourself; somebody will find out
what you can do and give you work." Her oldest son was passionately fond
of books and she helped him through school till he was able to become a
school teacher. But as the young man was high spirited and ambitious, he
resolved that he would make his school teaching a stepping stone to a
more congenial employment. He studied medicine and graduated with M.D.,
but as it takes a young doctor some time to gain the confidence of an
old community, he continued after his graduation to teach and obtained a
certificate to practice medicine. Without being forced to look to his
mother for assistance, while the confidence of his community was slowly
growing, he depended on the school for his living and looked to the
future for his success as a physician.

For the girls, because they were colored, there were but few avenues
open, but they all took in sewing and were excellent seamstresses,
except Lucy, who had gone from home to teach school in a distant city as
there were no openings of the kind for her at her own home.

Mrs. Harcourt was very proud of her children and had unbounded
confidence in them. She was high-spirited and self-respecting and it
never seemed to enter her mind that any evil might befall the children
that would bring sorrow and shame to her home; but nevertheless it came
and Lucy, her youngest child, the pet and pride of the household
returned home with a great sorrow tugging at her heart and a shadow on
her misguided life. It was the old story of woman's weakness and folly
and man's perfidy and desertion. Poor child, how wretched she was till
"peace bound up her bleeding heart," and even then the arrow had pierced
too deep for healing. Sorrow had wasted her strength and laid the
foundation of disease and an early death. Religion brought balm to the
wounded spirit, but no renewed vigor to the wasted frame and in a short
time she fell a victim to consumption, leaving Annette to the care of
her mother. It was so pitiful to see the sorrow on the dear old face as
she would nestle the wronged and disinherited child to her heart and
would say so mournfully, "Oh, I never, never expected this!"

Although Annette had come into the family an unbidden and unwelcome
guest, associated with the saddest experience of her grandmother's life,
yet somehow the baby fingers had wound themselves around the tendrils of
her heart and the child had found a shelter in the warm clasp of loving
arms. To her, Annette was a new charge, an increased burden; but burden
to be defended by her love and guarded by her care. All her other
children had married and left her, and in her lowly home this young
child with infantile sweetness, beguiled many a lonely hour. She loved
Lucy and that was Lucy's child.

  But where was he who sullied
    Her once unspotted name;
  Who lured her from life's brightness
    To agony and shame?

Did society, which closed its doors against Lucy and left her to
struggle as best she might out of the depth into which she had fallen,
pour any righteous wrath upon his guilty head? Did it demand that he
should at least bring forth some fruit meet for repentance by at least
helping Mrs. Harcourt to raise the unfortunate child? Not so. He left
that poor old grandmother to struggle with her failing strength, not
only to bear her own burden, but the one he had so wickedly imposed upon
her. He had left A.P. before Lucy's death and gone to the Pacific coast
where he became wealthy through liquor selling, speculation, gambling
and other disreputable means, and returned with gold enough to hide a
multitude of sins, and then fair women permitted and even courted his
society. Mothers with marriageable daughters condoned his offences
against morality and said, "oh, well, young men will sow their wild
oats; it is no use to be too straight laced." But there were a few
thoughtful mothers old fashioned enough to believe that the law of
purity is as binding upon the man as the woman, and who, under no
conditions, would invite him to associate with their daughters. Women
who tried to teach their sons to be worthy of the love and esteem of
good women by being as chaste in their conversation and as pure in their
lives as their young daughters who sat at their side sheltered in their
pleasant and peaceful homes. One of the first things that Frank Miller
did after he returned to A.P. was to open a large and elegantly
furnished saloon and restaurant. The license to keep such a place was
very high, and men said that to pay it he resorted to very questionable
means, that his place was a resort for gamblers, and that he employed a
young man to guard the entrance of his saloon from any sudden invasion
of the police by giving a signal without if he saw any of them
approaching, and other things were whispered of his saloon which showed
it to be a far more dangerous place for the tempted, unwary and
inexperienced feet of the young men of A.P., than any low groggery in
the whole city. Young men who would have scorned to enter the lowest
dens of vice, felt at home in his gilded palace of sin. Beautiful
pictures adorned the walls, light streamed into the room through finely
stained glass windows, women, not as God had made them, but as sin had
debased them, came there to spend the evening in the mazy dance, or to
sit with partners in sin and feast at luxurious tables. Politicians came
there to concoct their plans for coming campaigns, to fix their slates
and to devise means for grasping with eager hands the spoils of
government. Young men anxious for places in the gift of the government
found that winking at Frank Miller's vices and conforming to the
demoralizing customs of his place were passports to political favors,
and lacking moral stamina, hushed their consciences and became partakers
of his sins.[4] Men talked in private of his vices, and drank his
liquors and smoked his cigars in public. His place was a snare to their
souls. "The dead were there but they knew it not." He built a beautiful
home and furnished it magnificently, and some said that the woman who
married him would do well, as if it were possible for any woman to marry
well who linked her destinies to a wicked, selfish and base man, whose
business was a constant menace to the peace, the purity and progress of
society. I believe it was Milton who said that the purity of a man
should be more splendid than the purity of a woman, basing his idea upon
the declaration, "The head of the woman is the man, and the head of the
man is Jesus Christ." Surely if man occupies this high rank in the
creation of God he should ever be the true friend and helper of woman
and not, as he too often proves, her falsest friend and basest enemy.




Chapter IV


"Annette," said Mrs. Harcourt one morning early, "I want you to stir
your stumps to-day; I am going to have company this evening and I want
you to help me to get everything in apple pie order."

"Who is coming, grandma?"

"Mr. Thomas and Mrs. Lasette."

"Mrs. Lasette!" Annette's eyes brightened. "I hope she will come; she is
just as sweet as a peach and I do love her ever so much; and who else?"

"Brother Lomax, the minister who preached last Sunday and gave us such a
good sermon."

"Is he coming, too?" Annette opened her eyes with pleased surprise. "Oh,
I hope he will come, he's so nice."

"What do you know about him?"

"Why, grandmother, I understood everything that he said, and I felt that
I wanted to be good just like he told us, and I went and asked aunt
'Liza how people got religion. She had been to camp-meeting and seen
people getting religion, and I wanted her to tell me all about it for I
wanted to get it too."

"What did she tell you?"

"She told me that people went down to the mourner's bench and prayed and
then they would get up and shout and say they had religion, and that was
all she knew about it."

"You went to the wrong one when you went to your aunt 'Liza. And what
did you do after she told you?"

"Why, I went down in the garden and prayed and I got up and shouted, but
I didn't get any religion. I guess I didn't try right."

"I guess you didn't if I judge by your actions. When you get older you
will know more about it."

"But, grandma, Aunt 'Liza is older than I am, why don't she know?"

"Because she don't try; she's got her head too full of dress and dancing
and nonsense."

Grandmother Harcourt did not have very much faith in what she called
children's religion, and here was a human soul crying out in the
darkness; but she did not understand the cry, nor look for the
"perfecting of praise out of the mouths of babes and sucklings," not
discerning the emotions of that young spirit, she let the opportunity
slip for rightly impressing that young soul. She depended too much on
the church and too little on the training of the home. For while the
church can teach and the school instruct, the home is the place to train
innocent and impressible childhood for useful citizenship on earth and a
hope of holy companionship in heaven; and every Christian should strive
to have "her one of the provinces of God's kingdom," where she can plant
her strongest batteries against the ramparts of folly, sin and vice.

"Who else is coming, grandma?"

"Why, of course I must invite Mrs. Larkins; it would never do to leave
her out."

Annette shrugged her shoulders, a scowl came over her face and she said:

"I hope she won't come."

"I expect she will and when she comes I want you to behave yourself and
don't roll up your eyes at her and giggle at her and make ugly speeches.
She told me that you made mouths at her yesterday, and that when Mr.
Ross was whipping his horse you said you knew some one whom you wished
was getting that beating, and she said that she just believed you meant
her. How was that, Annette? If I were like you I would be all the time
keeping this neighborhood in hot water."

Annette looked rather crestfallen and said, "I did make mouths at her
house as I came by, but I didn't know that she saw me."

"Yes she did, and you had better mind how you cut your cards with her."

Annette finding the conversation was taking a rather disagreeable turn
suddenly remembered that she had something to do in the yard and ceased
to prolong the dialogue. If the truth must be confessed, Annette was not
a very earnest candidate for saintship, and annoying her next door
neighbor was one of her favorite amusements.

Grandma Harcourt lived in a secluded court, which was shut in on every
side but one from the main streets, and her environments were not of the
most pleasant and congenial kind. The neighbors, generally speaking,
belonged to neither the best nor worst class of colored people. The
court was too fully enclosed to be a thoroughfare of travel, but it was
a place in which women could sit at their doors and talk to one another
from each side of the court. Women who had no scruples about drinking as
much beer, and sometimes stronger drinks, as they could absorb, and some
of the men said that the women drank more than men, and under the
besotting influence of beer and even stronger drinks, a fearful amount
of gossiping, news-carrying and tattling went on, which often resulted
in quarrels and contentions, which, while it never resulted in blood,
sadly lowered the tone of social life. It was the arena of wordy strife
in which angry tongues were the only weapons of warfare, and poor little
Annette was fast learning their modes of battle. But there was one thing
against which grandmother Harcourt set her face like flint, and that was
sending children to saloons for beer, and once she flamed out with
righteous indignation when one of her neighbors, in her absence, sent
Annette to a saloon to buy her some beer. She told her in emphatic terms
she must never do so again, that she wanted her girl to grow up a
respectable woman, and that she ought to be ashamed of herself, not only
to be guzzling beer like a toper, but to send anybody's child to a
saloon to come in contact with the kind of men who frequented such
places, and that any women who sent their children to such places were
training their boys to be drunkards and their girls to be
street-walkers. "I am poor," she said, "but I mean to keep my credit up
and if you and I live in this neighborhood a hundred years you must
never do that thing again."

Her neighbor looked dazed and tried to stammer out an apology, but she
never sent Annette to a beer saloon again, and in course of time she
became a good temperance woman herself, influenced by the faithfulness
of grandmother Harcourt.

The court in which Mrs. Harcourt lived was not a very desirable place,
but, on account of her color, eligible houses could not always be
obtained, and however decent, quiet or respectable she might appear on
applying for a house, she was often met with the rebuff, "We don't rent
to colored people," and men who virtually assigned her race the lowest
place and humblest positions could talk so glibly of the degradation of
the Negro while by their Christless and inhuman prejudice they were
helping add to their low social condition. In the midst of her
unfavorable environments Mrs. Harcourt kept her home neat and tidy; sent
Annette to school constantly and tried to keep her out of mischief, but
there was moral contagion in the social atmosphere of Tennis Court and
Annette too often succumbed to its influence; but Annette was young and
liked the company of young girls and it seemed cruel to confine the
child's whole life to the home and schoolhouse and give her no chance to
be merry and playful with girls of her own age. So now and then
grandmother Harcourt would let her spend a little time with some of the
neighbors' girls but from the questions that Annette often asked her
grandmother and the conversations she sometimes repeated Mrs. Harcourt
feared that she was learning things which should only be taught by
faithful mothers in hours of sacred and tender confidence, and she
determined, even if it gave offence to her neighbors, that she would
choose among her own friends, companions for her granddaughter and not
leave all her social future to chance. In this she was heartily aided by
Mrs. Lasette, who made it a point to hold in that neighborhood, mothers'
meetings and try to teach mothers, who in the dark days of slavery had
no bolts nor bars strong enough to keep out the invader from scattering
their children like leaves in wintry weather, how to build up light and
happy homes under the new dispensation of freedom. To her it was a
labor of love and she found her reward in the peace and love which
flowed into the soul and the improved condition of society. In lowly
homes where she visited, her presence was a benediction and an
inspiration. Women careless in their household and slatternly in their
dress grew more careful in the keeping of their homes and the
arrangement of their attire. Women of the better class of their own
race, coming among them awakened their self-respect. Prejudice and pride
of race had separated them from their white neighbors and the more
cultured of their race had shrunk from them in their ignorance, poverty
and low social condition and they were left, in a great measure, to
themselves--ostracised by the whites on the one side and socially
isolated from the more cultured of their race on the other hand. The law
took little or no cognizance of them unless they were presented at its
bar as criminals; but if they were neither criminals nor paupers they
might fester in their vices and perpetuate their social condition. Who
understood or cared to minister to their deepest needs or greatest
wants? It was just here where the tender, thoughtful love of a
warm-hearted and intelligent woman was needed. To her it was a labor of
love, but it was not all fair sailing. She sometimes met with coldness
and distrust where she had expected kindness and confidence; lack of
sympathy where she had hoped to find ready and willing cooperation; but
she knew that if her life was in harmony with God and Christly sympathy
with man; for such a life there was no such word as fail.




Chapter V


By dint of energy and perseverance grandmother Harcourt had succeeded in
getting everything in order when her guests began to arrive. She had
just put the finishing touches upon her well-spread table and was
reviewing it with an expression of pleasure and satisfaction. And now
while the guests are quietly taking their seats let me introduce you to
them.

Mr. Thomas came bringing with him the young minister, Rev. Mr. Lomax,
whose sermon had so interested and edified Mrs. Harcourt the previous
Sunday. Mrs. Lasette, looking bright and happy, came with her daughter,
and Mrs. Larkins entered arrayed in her best attire, looking starched
and prim, as if she had made it the great business of her life to take
care of her dignity and to think about herself. Mrs. Larkins,[5] though
for years a member of church, had not learned that it was unchristian to
be narrow and selfish. She was strict in her attendance at church and
gave freely to its support; but somehow with all her attention to the
forms of religion, one missed its warm and vivifying influence from her
life, and in the loving clasp of a helping hand, in the tender beam of a
sympathizing glance, weary-hearted mothers and wives never came to her
with their heartaches and confided to her their troubles. Little
children either shrank from her or grew quiet in her presence. What was
missing from her life was the magnetism of love. She had become so
absorbed in herself that she forgot everybody else and thought more of
her rights than her duties. The difference between Mrs. Lasette and Mrs.
Larkins was this, that in passing through life one scattered sunshine
and the other cast shadows over her path. Mrs. Lasette was a fine
conversationalist. She regarded speech as one of heaven's best gifts,
and thought that conversation should be made one of the finest arts, and
used to subserve the highest and best purposes of life, and always
regretted when it was permitted to degenerate into gossip and
backbiting. Harsh judgment she always tried to modify, often saying in
doubtful cases, "Had we not better suspend our judgments? Truly we do
not like people to think the worst of us and it is not fulfilling the
law of love to think the worst of them. Do you not know that if we wish
to dwell in his tabernacle we are not to entertain a reproach against
our neighbor, nor to back-bite with our lips and I do not think there is
a sin which more easily besets society than this." "Speech," she would
say, "is a gift so replete with rich and joyous possibilities," and she
always tried to raise the tone of conversation at home and abroad. Of
her it might be emphatically said, "She opened her mouth with wisdom and
in her lips was the law of kindness."

The young minister, Rev. Mr. Lomax, was an earnest, devout and gifted
young man. Born in the midst of poverty, with the shadows of slavery
encircling his early life, he had pushed his way upward in the world,
"toiling while others slept." His father was dead. While living he had
done what he could to improve the condition of his family, and had, it
was thought, overworked himself in the struggle to educate and support
his children. He was a kind and indulgent father and when his son had
made excellent progress in his studies, he gave him two presents so dear
to his boyish heart--a gun and a watch. But the hour came when the
loving hands were closed over the quiet breast, and the widowed wife
found herself unable to provide the respectable funeral she desired to
give him. Thomas then came bravely and tenderly to her relief. He sold
his watch and gun to defray the funeral expenses of his father. He was a
good son to his aged mother, and became the staff of her declining
years. With an earnest purpose in his soul, and feeling that knowledge
is power, he applied himself with diligence to his studies, passed
through college, and feeling within his soul a commission to teach and
help others to develop within themselves the love of nature, he entered
the ministry, bringing into it an enthusiasm for humanity and love of
Christ, which lit up his life and made him a moral and spiritual force
in the community. He had several advantageous offers to labor in other
parts of the country, but for the sake of being true to the heavenly
vision, which showed him the needs of his people and his adaptation to
their wants, he chose, not the most lucrative, but the most needed work
which was offered him with

  A joy to find in every station,
  Something still to do or bear.

He had seen many things in the life of the people with whom he was
identified which gave him intense pain, but instead of constantly
censuring and finding fault with their inconsistencies of conscience, he
strove to live so blamelessly before them that he would show them by
example a more excellent way and "criticise by creation." To him
religion was a reasonable service and he wished it to influence their
conduct as well as sway their emotions. Believing that right thinking is
connected with right living, he taught them to be conservative without
being bigoted, and liberal without being morally indifferent and
careless in their modes of thought. He wanted them to be able to give a
reason for the faith that was in them and that faith to be rooted and
grounded in love. He was young, hopeful, and enthusiastic and life was
opening before him full of hope and promise.

"It has been a beautiful day," said Mrs. Lasette, seating herself beside
Mrs. Larkins,[6] who always waited to be approached and was ever ready
to think that some one was slighting her or ignoring her presence.

"It has been a fine day, but I think it will rain soon; I judge by my
corn."

"Oh! I think the weather is just perfect. The sun set gloriously this
evening and the sky was the brightest blue."

"I think the day was what I call a weather breeder. Whenever you see
such days this time of year, you may look out for falling weather. I
[expect?] that it will snow soon."

"How that child grows," said Mrs. Larkins, as Annette entered the room.

"Ill weeds grow apace; she has nothing else to do. That girl is going
to give her grandmother a great deal of trouble."

"Oh! I do not think so."

"Well, I do, and I told her grandmother so one day, but she did not
thank me for it."

"No, I suppose not."

"I didn't do it for thanks; I did it just to give her a piece of my mind
about that girl. She is the most mischievous and worrisome child I ever
saw. The partition between our houses is very thin and many a time when
I want to finish my morning sleep or take an afternoon nap, if Mrs.
Harcourt is not at home, Annette will sing and recite at the top of her
voice and run up and down the stairs as if a regiment of soldiers were
after her."

"Annette is quite young, full of life and brimful of mischief, and girls
of that age I have heard likened to persimmons before they are ripe; if
you attempt to eat them they will pucker your mouth, but if you wait
till the first frost touches them they are delicious. Have patience with
the child, act kindly towards her, she may be slow in developing womanly
sense, but I think that Annette has within her the making of a fine
woman."

"Do you know what Annette wants?"

"Yes, I know what she wants; but what do you think she wants?"

"She wants kissing."

"I'd kiss her with a switch if she were mine."

"I do not think it wise to whip a child of her age."

"I'd whip her if she were as big as a house."

"I do not find it necessary with my Laura; it is sufficient to deter her
from doing anything if she knows that I do not approve of it. I have
tried to establish perfect confidence between us. I do not think my
daughter keeps a secret from me. I think many young persons go astray
because their parents have failed to strengthen their characters and to
forewarn and forearm them against the temptations and dangers that
surround their paths. How goes the battle?" said Mrs. Lasette, turning
to Mr. Thomas.

"I am still at sea, and the tide has not yet turned in my favor. Of
course, I feel the change; it has taken my life out of its accustomed
channel, but I am optimist enough to hope that even this change will
result in greater good to the greatest number. I think one of our great
wants is the diversification of our industries, and I do not believe it
would be wise for the parents to relax their endeavors to give their
children the best education in their power. We cannot tell what a race
can do till it utters and expresses itself, and I know that there is an
amount of brain among us which can and should be utilized in other
directions than teaching school or seeking for clerkships. Mr. Clarkson
had a very intelligent daughter whom he wished to fit for some other
employment than that of a school teacher. He had her trained for a
physician. She went to B., studied faithfully, graduated at the head of
her class and received the highest medal for her attainments, thus
proving herself a living argument of the capability in her race. Her
friend, Miss Young, had artistic talent, and learned wood carving. She
developed exquisite taste and has become a fine artist in that branch of
industry. A female school teacher's work in the public schools is apt to
be limited to her single life, but a woman who becomes proficient in a
useful trade or business, builds up for herself a wall of defense
against the invasions of want and privation whether she is married or
single. I think that every woman, and man too, should be prepared for
the reverses of fortune by being taught how to do some one thing
thoroughly so as to be able to be a worker in the world's service, and
not a pensioner upon its bounty. And for this end it does not become us
as a race to despise any honest labor which lifts us above pauperism and
dependence. I am pleased to see our people having industrial fairs. I
believe in giving due honor to all honest labor, in covering idleness
with shame, and crowning labor with respect."




Chapter VI


For awhile Mrs. Harcourt was busy in preparing the supper, to which they
all did ample justice. In her white apron, faultless neck handkerchief
and nicely fitting, but plain dress, Mrs. Harcourt looked the
impersonation of contented happiness. Sorrow had left deep furrows upon
her kindly face, but for awhile the shadows seemed to have been lifted
from her life and she was the pleasant hostess, forgetting her own
sorrows in contributing to the enjoyment of others. Supper being over,
her guests resumed their conversation.

"You do not look upon the mixing of the schools as being necessarily
disadvantageous to our people," said the minister.

"That," said Mr. Thomas, "is just in accordance to the way we adapt
ourselves to the change. If we are to remain in this country as a
component part of the nation, I cannot fail to regard with interest any
step which tends toward our unification with all the other branches of
the human race in this Western Hemisphere."

"Although," said Mrs. Lasette, "I have been educating my daughter and
have felt very sorry when I have witnessed the disappointment of parents
who have fitted their children for teachers and have seen door after
door closed against them, I cannot help regarding the mixing of the
schools as at least one step in a right direction."

"But Mrs. Lasette," said the minister, "as we are educated by other
means than school books and blackboards, such as the stimulus of hope,
the incentives of self-respect and the consensus of public opinion, will
it not add to the depression of the race if our children are made to
feel that, however well educated they may be or exemplary as pupils, the
color of their skin must debar them from entering avenues which are
freely opened to the young girls of every other nationality."

Mr. Thomas replied, "In considering this question, which is so much
broader than a mere local question, I have tried to look beyond the life
of the individual to the life of the race, and I find that it is through
obstacles overcome, suffering endured and the tests of trial that
strength is obtained, courage manifested and character developed. We are
now passing through a crucial period in our race history and what we so
much need is moral earnestness, strength of character and purpose to
guide us through the rocks and shoals on which so many life barques have
been stranded and wrecked."

"Yes," said Mrs. Lasette, "I believe that we are capable of being more
than light-hearted children of the tropics and I want our young people
to gain more persistence in their characters, perseverance in their
efforts and that esprit de corps, which shall animate us with higher,
nobler and holier purpose in the future than we have ever known in the
past; and while I am sorry for the parents who, for their children's
sake, have fought against the entailed ignorance of the ages with such
humble weapons as the washboard, flat iron and scrubbing brush, and who
have gathered the crumbs from the humblest departments of labor, still I
feel with Mr. Thomas that the mixing of the schools is a stride in the
march of the nation, only we must learn how to keep step in the progress
of the centuries."

"I do not think that I fully comprehend you," Mr. Lomax replied.

"Let me explain. I live in the 19th Ward. In that Ward are not a half
dozen colored children. When my husband bought the land we were more
than a mile from the business part of the city, but we were poor and the
land was very cheap and my husband said that paying rent was like
putting money in a sinking fund; so he resolved, even if it put us to a
little disadvantage, that he would buy the tract of land where we now
live. Before he did so, he called together a number of his
acquaintances, pointed out to them the tract of land and told them how
they might join with him in planting a small hamlet for themselves; but
except the few colored neighbors we now have, no one else would join
with us. Some said it was too far from their work, others that they did
not wish to live among many colored people, and some suspected my
husband of trying either to take the advantage of them, or of
agrandising himself at their expense, and I have now dear friends who
might have been living comfortably in their own homes, who, to-day, are
crowded in tenement houses or renting in narrow alleys and little
streets."

"That's true," said Mrs. Larkins, "I am one of them. I wanted my husband
to take up with your husband's offer, but he was one of those men who
knew it all and he never seemed to think it possible that any colored
man could see any clearer than he did. I knew your husband's head was
level and I tried to persuade Mr. Larkins to take up with his offer, but
he would not hear to it; said he knew his own business best, and shut me
up by telling me that he was not going to let any woman rule over him;
and here I am to-day, Larkins gone and his poor old widow scuffing night
and day to keep soul and body together; but there are some men you
couldn't beat anything into their heads, not if you took a sledge
hammer. Poor fellow, he is gone now and I ought not to say anything agin
him, but if he had minded me, I would have had a home over my head and
some land under my feet; but it is no use to grieve over spilled milk.
When he was living if I said, yes, he was always sure to say, no. One
day I said to him when he was opposing me, the way we live is like the
old saying, 'Pull Dick and pull devil,' and what do you think he said?"

"I don't know, I'm sure, what was it?"

"Why, he just looked at me and smiled and said, 'I am Dick.' Of course
he meant that I was the other fellow."

"But," said Mrs. Lasette, "this is a digression from our subject. What
I meant to say is this, that in our Ward is an excellent school house
with a half score of well equipped and efficient teachers. The former
colored school house was a dingy looking building about a mile and a
half away with only one young school teacher, who had, it is true,
passed a creditable examination. Now, when my daughter saw that the
children of all other nationalities, it mattered not how low and
debasing might be their environments, could enter the school for which
her father paid taxes, and that she was forced either to stay at home or
to go through all weathers to an ungraded school, in a poorly ventilated
and unevenly heated room, would not such public inequality burn into her
soul the idea of race-inferiority? And this is why I look upon the mixed
school as a right step in the right direction."

"Taking this view of the matter I see the pertinence of your position on
this subject. Do you know," continued Mr. Lomax,[7] his face lighting up
with a fine enthusiasm, "that I am full of hope for the future of our
people?"

"That's more than I am," said Mrs. Larkins very coldly. "When you have
summered and wintered them as I have, you will change your tune."

"Oh, I hope not," he replied with an accent of distress in his voice.
"You may think me a dreamer and enthusiast, but with all our faults I
firmly believe that the Negro belongs to one of the best branches of the
human race, and that he has a high and holy mission in the great drama
of life. I do not think our God is a purposeless Being, but his ways are
not as our ways are, and his thoughts are not our thoughts, and I dare
not say 'Had I his wisdom or he my love,' the condition of humanity
would be better. I prefer thinking that in the crucible of pain and
apparent disaster, that we are held by the hand of a loving Father who
is doing for us all, the best he can to fit us for companionship with
him in the eternities, and with John G. Whittier, I feel:

  Amid the maddening maze of things
    When tossed by storm and flood,
  To one fixed stake my spirit clings
    I know that God is good.

"I once questioned and doubted, but now I have learned to love and trust
in 'Him whom the heavens must receive till the time of the restitution
of all things.' By this trust I do not mean a lazy leaning on Providence
to do for us what we have ability to do for ourselves. I think that our
people need more to be taught how to live than to be constantly warned
to get ready to die. As Brother Thomas said, we are now passing through
a crucial period of our history and what we need is life--more abundant
life in every fibre of our souls; life which will manifest itself in
moral earnestness, vigor of purpose, strength of character and spiritual
progression."

"I do hope," said Mr. Thomas, "that as you are among us, you will impart
some of your earnestness and enthusiasm to our young people."

"As I am a new comer here, and it is said that the people of A.P., are
very sensitive to criticism, though very critical themselves and rather
set and conservative in their ways, I hope that I shall have the benefit
of your experience in aiding me to do all I can to help the people among
whom my lot is cast."

"You are perfectly welcome to any aid I can give you. Just now some of
us are interested in getting our people out of these wretched alleys and
crowded tenement houses into the larger, freer air of the country. We
want our young men to help us fight the battle against poverty,
ignorance, degradation, and the cold, proud scorn of society. Before our
public lands are all appropriated, I want our young men and women to get
homesteads, and to be willing to endure privations in order to place our
means of subsistence on a less precarious basis. The land is a basis of
power, and like Anteus in the myth, we will never have our full measure
of material strength till we touch the earth as owners of the soil. And
when we get the land we must have patience and perseverance enough to
hold it."

"In one of our Western States is a city which suggests the idea of
Aladdin's wonderful lamp. Where that city now stands was once the
homestead of a colored man who came from Virginia and obtained it under
the homestead law. That man has since been working as a servant for a
man who lives on 80 acres of his former section, and who has plotted the
rest for the city of C."

"How did he lose it?"

"When he came from the South the country was new and female labor in
great demand. His wife could earn $1.50 a day, and instead of moving on
his land, he remained about forty miles away, till he had forfeited his
claim, and it fell into the hands of the present proprietor. Since then
our foresight has been developing and some months since in travelling in
that same State, I met a woman whose husband had taken up a piece of
land and was bringing it under cultivation. She and her children
remained in town where they could all get work, and transmit him help
and in a few years, I expect, they will be comfortably situated in a
home owned by their united efforts."




Chapter VII


What next? was the question Mr. Thomas was revolving in his mind, when a
knock was heard at his door, and he saw standing on the threshold, one
of his former pupils.

"Well, Charley, how does the world use you? Everything going on
swimmingly?"

"Oh, no indeed. I have lost my situation."

"How is that? You were getting on so well. Mr. Hazleton seemed to be
perfectly satisfied with you, and I thought that you were quite a
favorite in the establishment. How was it that you lost your place?"

"I lost it through the meanness of Mr. Mahler."

"Mr. Mahler, our Superintendent of public schools?"

"Yes, it was through him that I lost my situation."

"Why, what could you have done to offend him?"

"Nothing at all; I never had an unpleasant word with him in my life."

"Do explain yourself. I cannot see why he should have used any influence
to deprive you of your situation."

"He had it in his power to do me a mean, low-life trick, and he did it,
and I hope to see the day when I will be even with him," said the lad,
with a flashing eye, while an angry flush mantled his cheek.

"Do any of the family deal at Mr. Hazleton's store? Perhaps you gave
some of them offence through neglect or thoughtlessness in dealing with
them."

"It was nothing of the kind. Mr. Mahler knew me and my mother. He knew
her because she taught under him, and of course saw me often enough to
know that I was her son, and so last week when he saw me in the store, I
noticed that he looked very closely at me, and that in a few moments
after he was in conversation with Mr. Hazleton. He asked him, 'if he
employed a nigger for a cashier?' He replied, 'Of course not.' 'Well,'
he said, 'you have one now.' After that they came down to the desk where
I was casting up my accounts and Mr. Mahler asked, 'Is Mrs. Cooper your
mother?' I answered, 'yes sir.' Of course I would not deny my mother.
'Isn't your name Charley?'[8] and again I answered, yes; I could have
resorted to concealment, but I would not lie for a piece of bread, and
yet for mother's sake I sorely needed the place.

"What did Mr. Hazleton say?"

"Nothing, only I thought he looked at me a little embarrassed, just as
any half-decent man might when he was about to do a mean and cruel
thing. But that afternoon I lost my place. Mr. Hazleton said to me when
the store was about to close, that he had no further use for me. Not
discouraged, I found another place; but I believe that my evil genius
found me out and that through him I was again ousted from that situation
and now I am at my wits end."

"But, Charley, were you not sailing under false colors?"

"I do not think so, Mr. Thompson. I saw in the window an advertisement,
'A boy wanted.' They did not say what color the boy must be and I
applied for the situation and did my work as faithfully as I knew how.
Mr. Hazleton seemed to be perfectly satisfied with my work and as he did
not seek to know the antecedents of my family I did not see fit to
thrust them gratuitously upon him. You know the hard struggle my poor
mother has had to get along, how the saloon has cursed and darkened our
home and I was glad to get anything to do by which I could honestly earn
a dollar and help her keep the wolf from the door, and I tried to do my
level best, but it made no difference; as soon as it was known that I
had Negro blood in my veins door after door was closed against me; not
that I was not honest, industrious, obliging and steady, but simply
because of the blood in my veins."

"I admit," said Mr. Thomas, trying to repress his indignation and speak
calmly, "that it was a hard thing to be treated so for a cause over
which you had not the least control, but, Charley, you must try to pick
up courage."

"Oh, it seems to me that my courage has all oozed out. I think that I
will go away; maybe I can find work somewhere else. Had I been a convict
from a prison there are Christian women here who would have been glad to
have reached me out a helping hand and hailed my return to a life of
honest industry as a blessed crowning of their labors of love; while I,
who am neither a pauper nor felon, am turned from place after place
because I belong to a race on whom Christendom bestowed the curse of
slavery and under whose shadow has flourished Christless and inhuman
caste prejudice. So I think that I had better go and start life afresh."

"No, Charley, don't go away. I know you could pass as a white man; but,
Charley, don't you know that to do so you must separate from your
kindred and virtually ignore your mother? A mother, who, for your sake,
would, I believe, take blood from every vein and strength from every
nerve if it were necessary. If you pass into the white basis your mother
can never be a guest in your home without betraying your origin; you
cannot visit her openly and crown her with the respect she so well
deserves without divulging the secret of your birth; and Charley, by
doing so I do not think it possible that however rich or strong or
influential you may be as a white man, that you can be as noble and as
true a man as you will be if you stand in your lot without compromise or
concealment, and feel that the feebler your mother's race is the closer
you will cling to it. Charley, you have lately joined the church; your
mission in the world is not to seek to be rich and strong, but because
there is so much sin and misery in the world by it is to clasp the hand
of Christ through faith and try to make the world better by your
influence and gladder and brighter by your presence."

"Mr. Thomas I try to be, and I hope I am a Christian, but if these
prejudices are consistent with Christianity then I must confess that I
do not understand it, and if it is I do not want it. Are these people
Christians who open the doors of charitable institutions to sinners who
are white and close them against the same class who are black? I do not
call such people good patriots, let alone clear-sighted Christians. Why,
they act as if God had done wrong in making a man black, and that they
have never forgiven him and had become reconciled to the workmanship of
his hands."

"Charley, you are excited just now, and I think that you are making the
same mistake that better educated men than you have done. You are
putting Christianity and its abuses together. I do think, notwithstanding
all its perversions, and all the rubbish which has gathered around its
simplicity and beauty, that Christianity is the world's best religion.
I know that Christ has been wounded in what should have been the house
of his friends; that the banner of his religion which is broad enough
to float over the wide world with all its sin and misery, has been
drenched with the blood of persecution, trampled in the mire of slavery
and stained by the dust of caste proscription; but I believe that men
are beginning more fully to comprehend the claims of the gospel of
Jesus Christ. I am not afraid of what men call infidelity. I hold the
faith which I profess, to be too true, too sacred and precious to be
disturbed by every wave of wind and doubt. Amid all the religious
upheavals of the Nineteenth Century, I believe God is at the helm, that
there are petrifactions of creed and dogma that are to [be] broken up,
not by mere intellectual speculations, but by the greater solvent of
the constraining love of Christ, and it is for this that I am praying,
longing and waiting. Let schoolmen dispute and contend, the faith for
which I most ardently long and earnestly contend, is a faith which works
by love and purifies the soul."

"Mr. Thomas, I believe that there is something real about your religion,
but some of these white Christians do puzzle me awfully. Oh, I think
that I will go. I am sick and tired of the place. Everything seems to be
against me."

"No, Charley; stay for your mother's sake. I know a noble and generous
man who is brave enough to face a vitiated public opinion, and rich
enough to afford himself the luxury of a good conscience. I shall tell
him your story and try to interest him in your behalf. Will you stay?"

"I certainly will if he will give me any chance to get my living and
help my mother."

"It has been said that everything has two handles, and if you take it by
the wrong handle it will be too hard to hold."

"I should like to know which is the right handle to this prejudice
against color."

"I do not think that there is prejudice against color in this country."

"No prejudice against color!" said Charley Cooper,[9] opening his eyes
with sudden wonder. "What was it that dogged my steps and shut door
after door against me? Wasn't that prejudice against color?"

"Whose color, Charley? Surely not yours, for you are whiter than several
of Mr. Hazleton's clerks. Do you see in your case it was not prejudice
against color?"

"What was it, then?"

"It was the information that you were connected by blood with a once
enslaved and despised people on whom society had placed its ban, and to
whom slavery and a low social condition had given a heritage of scorn,
and as soon as he found out that you were connected with that race, he
had neither the manliness nor the moral courage to say, the boy is
capable and efficient. I see no cause why he should be dismissed for the
crimes of his white ancestors. I heard an eminent speaker once say that
some people would sing, 'I can smile at Satan's rage, and face a
frowning world,' when they hadn't courage enough to face their next door
neighbor on a moral question."

"I think that must be the case with Mr. Hazleton."

"I once used to despise such men. I have since learned to pity them."

"I don't see what you find to pity in Mr. Hazleton, unless it is his
meanness."

"Well, I pity him for that. I think there never was slave more cowed
under the whip of his master than he is under the lash of public
opinion. The Negro was not the only one whom slavery subdued to the
pliancy of submission. Men fettered the slave and cramped their own
souls, denied him knowledge and then darkened their own spiritual
insight, and the Negro, poor and despised as he was, laid his hands upon
American civilization and has helped to mould its character. It is God's
law. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, and men cannot sow avarice and
oppression without reaping the harvest of retribution. It is a dangerous
thing to gather

  The flowers of sin that blossom
    Around the borders of hell."




Chapter VIII


"I never want to go to that school again," said Annette entering Mrs.
Lasette's sitting room, throwing down her books on the table and looking
as if she were ready to burst into tears.

"What is the matter now, my dear child? You seem to be all out of
sorts."

"I've had a fuss with that Mary Joseph."

"Mary Joseph, the saloon-keeper's daughter?"

"Yes."

"How did it happen?"

"Yesterday in changing seats, the teacher put us together according to
the first letter in our last names. You know that I, comes next to J;
but there wasn't a girl in the room whose name begins with I, and so as
J comes next, she put Mary Joseph and myself together."

"Ireland and Africa, and they were not ready for annexation?"

"No, and never will be, I hope."

"Never is a long day, Annette, but go on with your story."

"Well, after the teacher put her in the seat next to me she began to
wriggle and squirm and I asked her if anything was biting her, because
if there was, I did not want it to get on me."

"Oh, Annette, what a girl you are; why did you notice her? What did she
say?"

"She said if there was, it must have got there since the teacher put
her on that seat, and it must have come from me."

"Well, Mary Joseph knows how to scratch as well as you do."

"Yes, she is a real scratch cat."

"And what are you, my dear; a pattern saint?"

"No," said Annette, as the ruefulness of her face relaxed into a smile,
"but that isn't all; when I went to eat my lunch, she said she wasn't
used to eating with niggers. Then I asked her if her mother didn't eat
with the pigs in the old country, and she said that she would rather eat
with them than to eat with me, and then she called me a nigger and I
called her a poor white mick."

"Oh, Annette, I am so sorry; I am afraid that trouble may come out of
this fuss, and then it is so wrong and unlady-like for you to be
quarrelling that way. Do you know how old you are?"

"I am almost fourteen years old."

"Where was the teacher all this time? Did she know anything about it?"

"No; she was out of the room part of the time, but I don't think she
likes colored people, because last week when Joe Smith was cutting up in
school, she made him get up and sit alongside of me to punish him."

"She should not have done so, but I don't suppose she thought for one
moment how it looked."

"I don't know, but when I told grandma about it, Mrs. Larkins was in the
room, and she said if she had done a child of hers so, she would have
gone there and sauced her head off; but grandma said that she would not
notice it; that the easiest way is the best."

"I think that your grandmother was right; but what did Joe say?"

He said that the teacher didn't spite him; that he would as lieve sit by
me as any girl in school, and that he liked girls."

"A little scamp."

"He says he likes girls because they are so jolly."

"But tell me all about Mary Joseph."

"Well, a mean old thing, she went and told her horrid old father, and
just as I was coming along he took hold of my arm and said he had heard
that I had called his daughter, Miss Mary Joseph, a poor white mick and
that if I did it again he would give me a good thrashing, and that for
two pins he would do it then."

"What next?"

"I guess I felt like Mrs. Larkins does when she says her Guinea gets up.
My Guinea was up but I was afraid to show it. Oh, but I do hate these
Irish. I don't like them for anything. Grandmother says that an Irishman
is only a negro turned wrong side out, and I told her so yesterday
morning when she was fussing with me."

"Say, rather, when we were fussing together; I don't think the fault was
all on her side."

"But, Mrs. Lasette, she had no business calling me a nigger."

"Of course not; but would you have liked it [any] better if she had
called you a negro?"

"No; I don't want her to call me anything of the kind, neither negro nor
nigger. She shan't even call me black."

"But, Annette, are you not black?"

"I don't care if I am, she shan't call me so."

"But suppose you were to say to Miss Joseph, 'How white your face is,'
do you suppose she would get angry because you said that she looked
white?"

"No, of course not."

"But suppose you met her hurrying to school, and you said to her, how
red and rosy you look this morning, would that make her angry?"

"I don't suppose that it would."

"But suppose she would say to you, 'Annette, how black your face is this
morning,' how would you feel?"

"I should feel like slapping her."

"Why so; do you think because Miss Joseph----"

"Don't call her Miss, she is so mean and hateful."

"But that don't hinder her from being Miss Joseph; If she is rude and
coarse, that is no reason why I should not have good manners."

"Oh, Mrs. Lasette you are too sweet for anything. I wish I was like
you."

"Never mind my sweetness; that is not to the point. Will you listen to
me, my dear?"

"Of course I will. I could listen to you all night."

"Well, if it were not for signs there's no mistaking I should think you
had a lot of Irish blood in your veins, and had kissed the blarney
stone."

"No I haven't and if I had I would try to let----"

"Hush, my child; how you do rattle on. Do you think because Miss Joseph
is white that she is any better than you are."

"No, of course not."

"But don't you think that she can see and hear a little better than you
can?"

"Why, no; what makes you ask such a funny question?"

"Never mind, just answer me a few more questions. Don't you think if you
and she had got to fighting that she would have whipped you because she
is white?"

"Why, of course not. Didn't she try to get the ruler out of my hand and
didn't because I was stronger."

"But don't you think she is smarter than you are and gets her lessons
better."

"Now you are shouting."

"Why, Annette, where in the world did you get that slang?"

"Why, Mrs. Lasette, I hear the boys saying it in the street, and the
girls in Tennis Court all say it, too. Is there any harm in it?"

"It is slang, my child, and a young lady should never use slang. Don't
use it in private and you will not be apt to use it in public. However
humble or poor a person may be, there is no use in being coarse and
unrefined."

"But what harm is there in it?"

"I don't say that there is any, but I don't think it nice for young
ladies to pick up all sorts of phrases in the street and bring them into
the home. The words may be innocent in themselves, but they may not have
the best associations, and it is safer not to use them. But let us
return to Miss Joseph. You do not think that she can see or hear any
better than you can, learn her lessons any quicker than you can, and
when it comes to a trial of strength that she is stronger than you are,
now let me ask you one more question. Who made Miss Joseph?"

"Why, the Lord, of course."

"And who made you?"

"He made me, too."

"Are you sure that you did not make yourself?"

"Why, of course not," said Annette with an accent of wonder in her
voice.

"Does God ever make any mistakes?"

"Why, no!"

"Then if any one calls you black, why should you get angry? You say it
would not make Miss Joseph angry to say she looked white, or red and
rosy."

"I don't know; I know I don't like it and it makes me mad."

"Now, let me explain the reason why it makes you angry to be called
black. Suppose I were to burn my hand in that stove, what would I have
on my hand?"

"A sore place."

"If it were your hand, what would you do?"

"I would put something on it, wrap it up to keep from getting cold into
it and try to get it well as soon as I could."

"Well, that would be a very sensible way of dealing with it. In this
country, Annette, color has been made a sore place; it has been
associated with slavery, poverty and ignorance. You cannot change your
color, but you can try to change the association connected with our
complexions. Did slavery force a man to be servile and submissive? Learn
to hold up your head and respect yourself. Don't notice Mary Joseph's
taunts; if she says things to tease you don't you let her see that she
has succeeded. Learn to act as if you realized that you were born into
this world the child of the Ruler of the universe, that this is his
world and that you have as much right in it as she has. I think it was
Gilbert Haven, a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a man for
whose tombstone I do not think America has any marble too white or any
laurel too green, who saw on his travels a statue of Cleopatra, which
suggested to him this thought, 'I am black, but comely, the sun has
looked down upon me, but I will make you who despise me feel that I am
your superior,' and, Annette, I want you to be so noble, true and pure
that if everybody should hate you, that no one could despise you. No,
Annette, if Miss Joseph ever attempts to quarrel with you don't put
yourself on the same level by quarreling with her. I knew her parents
when they were very poor; when a half dozen of them slept in one room.
He has made money by selling liquor; he is now doing business in one of
the most valuable pieces of property I see in East L street. He has been
a curse, and his saloon a nuisance in that street. He has gone up in
property and even political influence, but oh, how many poor souls have
gone down, slain by strong drink and debauchery."




Chapter IX


True to his word, Mr. Thomas applied to Mr. Hastings, the merchant, of
whom he had spoken to his young friend. He went to his counting-room and
asked for a private interview, which was readily granted. They had
kindred intellectual and literary tastes and this established between
them a free masonry of mind which took no account of racial differences.

"I have a favor to ask," said Mr. Thomas, "can you spare me a few
moments?"

"I am at your service," Mr. Hasting replied, "what can I do for you?"

"I have," he said, "a young friend who is honest and industrious and
competent to fill the place of clerk or cashier in your store. He has
been a cashier for Hazleton & Co., and while there gave entire
satisfaction."

"Why did he leave?"

"I cannot say, because he was guilty of a skin not colored like your
own, but because a report was brought to Mr. Hazleton that he had Negro
blood in his veins."

"And what then?"

"He summarily dismissed him."

"What a shame!"

"Yes, it was a shame, but this pride of caste dwarfs men's moral
perception so that it prepares them to do a number of contemptible
things which, under other circumstances, they would scorn to do."

"Yes, it is so, and I am sorry to see it."

"There are men, Mr. Hastings, who would grow hotly indignant if you
would say that they are not gentlemen who would treat a Negro in a
manner which would not be recognized as fair, even by ruffians of the
ring, for, I believe, it is their code of honor not to strike a man when
he is down; but with respect to the colored man, it seems to be a
settled policy with some not only to push him down, but to strike him
when he is down. But I must go; I came to ask a favor and it is not
right to trespass on your time."

"No; sit still. I have a little leisure I can give you. My fall trade
has not opened yet and I am not busy. I see and deplore these things of
which you complain, but what can be done to help it?"

"Mr. Hastings, you see them, and I feel them, and I fear that I am
growing morbid over them, and not only myself, but other educated men
of my race, and that, I think, is a thing to be deprecated. Between the
white people and the colored people of this country there is a unanimity
of interest and I know that our interests and duties all lie in one
direction. Can men corrupt and intimidate voters in the South without a
reflex influence being felt in the North? Is not the depression of labor
in the South a matter of interest to the North? You may protect yourself
from what you call the pauper of Europe, but you will not be equally
able to defend yourself from the depressed laborer of the new South, and
as an American citizen, I dread any turn of the screw which will lower
the rate of wages here; and I like to feel as an American citizen that
whatever concerns the nation concerns me. But I feel that this prejudice
against my race compresses my soul, narrows my political horizon and
makes me feel that I am an alien in the land of my birth. It meets me in
the church, it confronts me in business and I feel its influence in
almost every avenue of my life."

"I wish, Mr. Thomas, that some of the men who are writing and talking
about the Negro problem would only come in contact with the thoughtful
men of your race. I think it would greatly modify their views."

"Yes, you know us as your servants. The law takes cognizance of our
crimes. Your charitable institutions of our poverty, but what do any of
you know of our best and most thoughtful men and women? When we write
how many of you ever read our books and papers or give yourselves any
trouble to come near us as friends and help us? Even some of your
professed Christians are trying to set us apart as if we were social
lepers."

"You draw a dark picture. I confess that I feel pained at the condition
of affairs in the South, but what can we do in the South?"

"Set the South a better example. But I am hindering you in your
business."

"Not at all. I want to see things from the same standpoint that you do."

"Put yourself then in my place. You start both North and South from the
premise that we are an inferior race and as such you have treated us.
Has not the consensus of public opinion said for ages, 'No valor redeems
our race, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the
ban which clings to us'; that our place is on the lowest round of the
social ladder; that at least, in part of the country we are too low for
the equal administrations of religion and the same dispensations of
charity and a fair chance in the race of life?"

"You bring a heavy verdict against us. I hardly think that it can be
sustained. Whatever our motives may have been, we have been able to
effect in a few years a wonderful change in the condition of the Negro.
He has freedom and enfranchisement and with these two great rights he
must work out his social redemption and political solution. If his means
of education have been limited, a better day is dawning upon him. Doors
once closed against him in the South are now freely opened to him, and I
do not think that there ever was a people who freed their slaves who
have given as much for their education as we have, and my only hope is
that the moral life of the race will keep pace with its intellectual
growth. You tell me to put myself in your place. I think if I were a
colored young man that I would develop every faculty and use every power
which God had given me for the improvement and development of my race.
And who among us would be so blind and foolish as to attempt to keep
down an enlightened people who were determined to rise in the scale of
character and condition? No, Mr. Thomas, while you blame us for our
transgressions and shortcomings, do not fail to do all you can to rouse
up all the latent energies of your young men to do their part worthily
as American citizens and to add their quota to the strength and progress
of the nation."

"I am conscious of the truth and pertinence of your remarks, but bear
with me just a few moments while I give an illustration of what I mean."

"Speak on, I am all attention. The subject you bring before me is of
too vital importance to be constantly ignored."

"I have a friend who is presiding elder in the A.M.E. Church and his
wife, I think, is capable of being a social and intellectual accession
in any neighborhood in which they might live. He rented a house in the
city of L. and being of a fair complexion I suppose the lessee rented to
him without having a suspicion of his race connection. When it was
ascertained that he and his family were colored, he was ordered to
leave, and this man, holding among the ministers of that city the
position of ambassador for Christ, was ordered out of the house on
account of the complexion of his family. Was there not a screw loose in
the religious sentiment of that city which made such an act possible? A
friend of mine who does mission work in your city, some time since,
found a young woman in the slums and applied at the door of a midnight
mission for fallen women, and asked if colored girls could be received,
and was curtly answered, 'no.' For her in that mission there was no room.
The love of Christ constrained no hand to strive to rescue her from the
depths of degradation. The poor thing went from bad to worse till at
last, wrecked and blighted, she went down to an early grave the victim
of strong drink. That same lady found on her mission a white girl;
seeing a human soul adrift, regardless of color, she went, in company
with some others, to that same mission with the poor castaway; to her
the door was opened without delay and ready admittance granted. But I
might go on reciting such instances until you would be weary of hearing
and I of relating them; but I appeal to you as a patriot and Christian,
is it not fearfully unwise to keep alive in freedom the old animosities
of slavery? To-day the Negro shares citizenship with you. He is not
arraying himself against your social order; his hands are not dripping
with dynamite, nor is he waving in your face the crimson banners of
anarchy, but he is increasing in numbers and growing in intelligence,
and is it not madness and folly to subject him to social and public
inequalities, which are calculated to form and keep alive a hatred of
race as a reaction against pride of caste?"

"Mr. Thomas, you have given me a new view of the matter. To tell you the
truth, we have so long looked upon the colored man as a pliable and
submissive being that we have never learned to look at any hatred on his
part as an element of danger, and yet I should be sorry to know that by
our Southern supineness we were thoughtlessly helping create a black
Ireland in our Gulf States, that in case the fires of anarchy should
ever sweep through our land, that a discontented and disaffected people
in our midst might be as so much fuel to fire."

"But really I have been forgetting my errand. Have you any opening in
your store for my young friend?"

"I have only one vacancy, and that is the place of a utility man."

"What are the duties of that position?"

"Almost anything that comes to hand; tying up bundles, looking after the
mails, scattering advertisements. A factotum whose work lies here, there
and everywhere."

"I am confident that he will accept the situation and render you
faithful service."

"Well, then send him around tomorrow and if there is anything in him I
may be able to do better by him when the fall trade opens."

And so Charley Cooper was fortunate enough in his hour of perplexity to
find a helping hand to tide him over a difficult passage in his life.
Gratefully and faithfully did he serve Mr. Hastings, who never regretted
the hour when he gave the struggling boy such timely assistance. The
discipline of the life through which he was passing as the main stay of
his mother, matured his mind and imparted to it a thoughtfulness past
his years. Instead of wasting his time in idle and pernicious pleasure,
he learned how to use his surplus dollar and how to spend his leisure
hours, and this knowledge told upon his life and character. He was not
very popular in society. Young men with cigars in their mouths and the
perfume of liquor on their breaths, shrugged their shoulders and called
him a milksop because he preferred the church and Sunday school to the
liquor saloon and gambling dens. The society of P. was cut up and
divided into little sets and coteries; there was an amount of
intelligence among them, but it ran in narrow grooves and scarcely
one[10] intellect seemed to tower above the other, and if it did, no
people knew better how to ignore a rising mind than the society people
of A.P. If the literary aspirant did not happen to be of their set. As
to talent, many of them were pleasant and brilliant conversationalists,
but in the world of letters scarcely any of them were known or
recognized outside of their set. They had leisure, a little money and
some ability, but they lacked the perseverance and self-denial
necessary to enable them to add to the great resources of natural
thought. They had narrowed their minds to the dimensions of their set
and were unprepared to take expansive[11] views of life and duty. They
took life as a holiday and the lack of noble purposes and high and holy
aims left its impress upon their souls and deprived them of that joy and
strength which should have crowned their existence and given to their
lives its "highest excellence and beauty."




Chapter X


Two years have elapsed since we left Annette recounting her school
grievances to Mrs. Lasette. She has begun to feel the social contempt
which society has heaped upon the colored people, but she has determined
not to succumb to it. There is force in the character of that fiery,
impetuous and impulsive girl, and her school experience is bringing it
out. She has been bending all her mental energies to compete for the
highest prize at the commencement of her school, from which she expects
to graduate in a few weeks. The treatment of the saloon-keeper's
daughter, and that of other girls of her ilk, has stung her into
strength. She feels that however despised her people may be, that a
monopoly of brains has not been given to the white race. Mr. Thomas has
encouraged her efforts, and taught her to believe that not only is her
own honor at stake as a student, but that as a representative of her
branch of the human race, she is on the eve of winning, or losing, not
only for herself, but for others. This view of the matter increases her
determination and rouses up all the latent energies of her nature, and
she labors day and night to be a living argument of the capability in
her race. For other girls who will graduate in that school, there will
be open doors, and unclosed avenues, while she knows that the color of
her skin will bar against her the doors of workshops, factories and
school rooms, and yet Mr. Thomas, knowing all the discouragements around
her path, has done what he could to keep her interest in her studies
from flagging. He knows that she has fine abilities, but that they must
be disciplined by trial and endeavor before her life can be rounded by
success and triumph. He has seen several of her early attempts at
versification; pleased and even delighted with them, he has shown them
to a few of his most intellectual friends. Eager and earnest for the
elevation of the colored people, he has been pained at the coldness with
which they have been received.

"I do not call that poetry," said one of the most intelligent women of
A.P.

"Neither do I see anything remarkable about her," said another.

"I did not," said Mr. Thomas, "bring you the effusions of an
acknowledged poet, but I think that the girl has fine ability, which
needs encouragement and recognition."

But his friends could not see it; they were very charry of their
admiration, lest their judgment should be found at fault, and then it
was so much easier to criticise than it was to heartily admire; and they
knew it seemed safer to show their superior intelligence by dwelling on
the defects, which would necessarily have an amount of crudeness in them
than to look beneath the defects for the suggestions of beauty, strength
and grace which Mr. Thomas saw in these unripe, but promising effusions.
It seemed perfectly absurd with the surroundings of Tennis Court to
expect anything grand or beautiful [to] develop in its midst; but with
Annette, poetry was a passion born in her soul, and it was as natural
for her to speak in tropes and figures as it was for others to talk in
plain, common prose. Mr. Thomas called her "our inveterate poet," and
encouraged her, but the literary aspirants took scarcely any interest in
the girl whom they left to struggle on as best she might. In her own
home she was doomed to meet with lack of encouragement and appreciation
from her relatives and grandmother's friends. One day her aunt, Eliza
Hanson, was spending the day with her mother, and Annette showed her
some of her verses and said to her, "that is one of my best pieces."

"Oh, you have a number of best pieces," said her aunt, carelessly. "Can
you cook a beefsteak?"

"I suppose I could if I tried."

"Well, you had better try than to be trying to string verses together.
You seem to think that there must be something very great about you. I
know where you want to get. You want to get among the upper tens, but
you haven't got style enough about you for that."

"That's just what I tell her," said her grandmother. "She's got too many
airs for a girl in her condition. She talks about writing a book, and
she is always trying to make up what she calls poetry. I expect that she
will go crazy some of these days. She is all the time talking to
herself, and I just think it is a sin for her to be so much taken up
with her poetry."

"You had better put her to work; had she not better go out to service?"

"No, I am going to let her graduate first."

"What's the use of it? When she's through, if she wants to teach, she
will have to go away."

"Yes, I know that, but Mrs. Lasette has persuaded me to let Annette
graduate, and I have promised that I would do so, and besides I think to
take Annette from school just now would almost break her heart."

"Well, mother, that is just like you; you will work yourself almost to
death to keep Annette in school, and when she is through what good will
it do her?"

"Maybe something will turn up that you don't see just now. When a good
thing turns up if a person ain't ready for it they can't take hold of
it."

"Well, I hope a good husband will turn up for my Alice."

"But maybe the good husband won't turn up for Annette."

"That is well said, for they tell me that Annette is not very popular,
and that some of the girls are all the time making fun of her."

"Well, they had better make fun of themselves and their own bad manners.
Annette is poor and has no father to stand by her, and I cannot
entertain like some of their parents can, but Annette, with all her
faults, is as good as any of them. Talk about the prejudice of the white
people, I think there is just as much prejudice among some colored as
there is among them, only we do not get the same chance to show it; we
are most too mixed up and dependent on one another for that." Just then
Mrs. Lasette entered the room and Mrs. Hanson, addressing her, said, "We
were just discussing Annette's prospects. Mother wants to keep Annette
at school till she graduates, but I think she knows enough now to teach
a country school and it is no use for mother to be working as she does
to keep Annette in school for the sake of letting her graduate. There
are lots of girls in A.P. better off than she who have never graduated,
and I don't see that mother can afford to keep Annette at school any
longer."

"But, Eliza, Annette is company for me and she does help about the
house."

"I don't think much of her help; always when I come home she has a book
stuck under her nose."

"Annette," said Mrs. Lasette, "is a favorite of mine; I have always a
warm place in my heart for her, and I really want to see the child do
well. In my judgment I do not think it advisable to take her from school
before she graduates. If Annette were indifferent about her lessons and
showed no aptitude for improvement I should say as she does not
appreciate education enough to study diligently and has not aspiration
enough to keep up with her class, find out what she is best fitted for
and let her be instructed in that calling for which she is best
adapted."

"I think," said Mrs. Hanson, "you all do wrong in puffing up Annette
with the idea that she is something extra. You think, Mrs. Lasette, that
there is something wonderful about Annette, but I can't see it, and I
hear a lot of people say she hasn't got good sense."

"They do not understand the child."

"They all say that she is very odd and queer and often goes out into the
street as if she never saw a looking glass. Why, Mrs. Miller's daughter
just laughed till she was tired at the way Annette was dressed when she
went to call on an acquaintance of hers. Why, Annette just makes herself
a perfect laughing stock."

"Well, I think Mary Miller might have found better employment than
laughing at her company."

"Now, let me tell you, Mary Miller don't take her for company, and that
very evening Annette was at my house, just next door, and when Mary
Miller went to church she never asked her to go along with her, although
she belongs to the same church."

"I am sorry to say it," said grandmother Harcourt, "but your Alice
hardly ever comes to see Annette, and never asks her to go anywhere with
her, but may be in the long run Annette will come out better than some
who now look down upon her. It is a long road that has no turn and
Annette is like a singed cat; she is better than she looks."

"I think," said Mrs. Lasette, "while Annette is very bright and
intelligent as a pupil, she has been rather slow in developing in some
other directions. She lacks tact, is straightforward to bluntness and
has not any style about her and little or no idea of company manners,
but she is never coarse nor rude. I never knew her to read a book whose
author I would blush to name, and I never heard her engage in any
conversation I would shrink to hear repeated. I don't think there is a
girl of purer lips in A.P. than Annette, and I do not think your set, as
you call it, has such a monopoly of either virtue or intelligence that
you can afford to ridicule and depress any young soul who does not
happen to come up to your social standard. Where dress and style are
passports Annette may be excluded, but where brain and character count
Annette will gain admittance. I fear," said Mrs. Lasette, rising to go,
"that many a young girl has gone down in the very depths who might have
been saved if motherly women, when they saw them unloved and lonely, had
reached out to them a helping hand and encouraged them to live useful
and good lives. We cry am I my sister's keeper? [I?] will not wipe the
blood off our hands if through pride and selfishness we have stabbed by
our neglect souls we should have helped by our kindness. I always feel
for young girls who are lonely and neglected in large cities and are in
danger of being ensnared by pretended sympathies and false friendship,
and, to-day, no girl is more welcome at any social gathering than
Annette."

"Mrs. Lasette," said Mrs. Hanson, "you are rich and you can do as you
choose in A.P. You can set the fashion."

"No; I am not rich, but I hope that I will always be able to lend a
hand to any lonely girl who is neglected, slighted and forgotten while
she is trying to do right, who comes within my reach while I live in
A.P. Good morning."

"Annette," said Mrs. Hanson,[12] "has a champion who will stand by her."

"Yes," said Mrs. Harcourt,[13] "Anna is true as steel; the kind of woman
you can tie to. When my great trouble came, she was good as gold, and
when my poor heart was almost breaking, she always had a kind word for
me. I wish we had ten thousand like her."

"Well, mother, I must go, but if Annette does graduate don't let her go
on the stage looking like a fright. General H's daughter has a beautiful
new silk dress and a lovely hat which she got just a few weeks before
her mother's death; as she has gone in black she wants to sell it, and
if you say so, and will pay for it on installments, I can get if for
Annette, and I think with a little alteration it would be splendid for
her graduation dress."

"No; Eliza, I can't afford it."

"Why, mother, Annette will need something nice for the occasion, and it
will not cost any more than what you intend to pay for her dress and
hat. Why not take them?"

"Because Annette is not able to wear them. Suppose she had that one fine
dress and hat, would she not want more to match with them? I don't want
her to learn to dress in a style that she cannot honestly afford. I
think this love of dress is the ruination of many a young girl. I think
this straining after fine things when you are not able to get them, is
perfectly ridiculous. I believe in cutting your coat according to your
cloth. I saw Mrs. Hempstead's daughter last Sunday dressed up in a
handsome light silk, and a beautiful spring hat, and if she or her
mother would get sick to-morrow, they would, I suppose, soon be objects
of public charity or dependent on her widowed sister, who is too proud
to see her go to the poor house; and this is just the trouble with a lot
of people; they not only have their own burdens to bear but somebody
else's. You may call me an old fogy, but I would rather live cheap and
dress plain than shirk my burdens because I had wasted when they had
saved. You and John Hanson are both young and have got your health and
strength, and instead of buying sealskins, and velvets and furbelows,
you had better be laying up for a rainy day. You have no more need for a
sealskin cloak than a cat has for a catechism. Now you do as you please,
I have had my say."




Chapter XI


It has been quite a length of time since we left Mr. Thomas and his
young friend facing an uncertain future. Since then he has not only been
successful in building up a good business for himself, but in opening
the gates to others. His success has not inflated him with pride.
Neither has he become self-abashed and isolated from others less
fortunate, who need his counsel and sympathy. Generous and noble in his
character, he was conservative enough to cling to the good of the past
and radical enough to give hospitality to every new idea which was
calculated to benefit and make life noble and better. Mr. Thomas, in
laying the foundation of his education, was thoughtful enough to enter
a manual labor school, where he had the double advantage of getting
an education and learning a trade, through which he was enabled to
rely on himself without asking aid from any one, which in itself was
an education in manliness, self-respect and self-reliance, that he
could not have obtained had he been the protege of the wealthiest
philanthropist in the land. As he had fine mechanical skill and
ingenuity, he became an excellent carpenter. But it is one thing to have
a trade and another thing to have an opportunity to exercise that trade.
It was a time when a number of colored churches were being erected. To
build large and even magnificent churches seemed to be a ruling passion
with the colored people. Their homes might be very humble, their walls
bare of pictured grace, but by united efforts they could erect large and
handsome churches in which they had a common possession and it was one
of the grand satisfactions of freedom that they were enabled to build
their own churches and carry on their own business without being
interfered with, and overlooked by a class of white ecclesiastics whose
presence was a reminder of their implied inferiority. The church of
which Mr. Thomas was a member was about to erect a costly edifice. The
trustees would probably have willingly put the work in the hands of a
colored man, had there been a sufficient number to have done the work,
but they did not seem to remember that white prejudice had barred the
Northern workshops against the colored man, that slavery, by degrading
and monopolizing labor had been the means of educating colored men in
the South to be good mechanics, and that a little pains and search on
their part might have brought to light colored carpenters in the South
who would have done the work as efficiently as those whom they employed,
but as the trustees were not very farsighted men, they did the most
available thing that came to hand; they employed a white man. Mr.
Thomas' pastor applied to the master builder for a place for his
parishioner.

"Can you give employment to one of my members, on our church?" Rev.
Mr. Lomax asked the master builder.

"I would willingly do so, but I can not."

"Why not?"

"Because my men would all rise up against it. Now, for my part, I have
no prejudice against your parishioner, but my men will not work with a
colored man. I would let them all go if I could get enough colored men
to suit me just as well, but such is the condition of the labor market,
that a man must either submit to a number of unpalatable things or run
the risk of a strike and being boycotted. I think some of these men who
want so much liberty for themselves have very little idea of it for
other people."

After this conversation the minister told Mr. Thomas the result of his
interview with the master builder, and said,

"I am very sorry; but it is as it is, and it can't be any better."

"Do you mean by that that things are always going to remain as they
are?"

"I do not see any quick way out of it. This prejudice is the outgrowth
of ages; it did not come in a day, nor do I expect that it will vanish
in an hour."

"Nor do I; but I do not think the best way for a people to mend their
pastures is to sit down and bewail their fate."

"No; we must be up and going for ourselves. White people will----"

"White people," exclaimed Mr. Thomas somewhat impatiently. "Is there not
a great deal of bosh in the estimate some of us have formed of white
people. We share a common human feeling, from which the same cause
produces the same effect. Why am I today a social Pariah, begging for
work, and refused situation after situation? My father is a wealthy
Southerner; he has several other sons who are inheritors of his name and
heirs of his wealth. They are educated, cultured and occupy high social
positions. Had I not as good a right to be well born as any of them? And
yet, through my father's crime, I was doomed to the status of a slave
with its heritage of ignorance, poverty and social debasement. Talk of
the heathenism of Africa, of hostile tribes warring upon each other and
selling the conquered foes into the hands of white men, but how much
higher in the scale of moral progression was the white man who doomed
his own child, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, to a life of
slavery? The heathen could plead in his defence the fortunes of war, and
the hostility of an opposing tribe, but the white man who enslaved his
child warred upon his hapless offspring and wrote chattel upon his
condition when his hand was too feeble to hurl aside the accursed hand
and recognize no other ownership but God. I once felt bitterly on this
subject, and although it is impossible for my father to make full
reparation for the personal wrong inflicted on me, I owe him no grudge.
Hating is poor employment for any rational being, but I am not prepared
to glorify him at the expense of my mother's race. She was faithful to
me when he deserted me to a life of ignorance and poverty, and although
three-fourths of the blood in my veins belongs to my father's face, I
feel a kinship with my mother's people that I do not with his, and I
will defend that race from the aspersions of the meanest Negro hater in
the land. Heathenism and civilization live side by side on American
soil, but all the heathenism is not on the side of the Negro. Look at
slavery and kukluxism with their meanness and crimes, mormonism with its
vile abominations, lynch law with its burnings and hangings, our
national policy in regard to the Indians and Chinese."

"I do not think," said the minister, "that there is another civilized
country in the world where men are lynched for real or supposed crimes
outside of America."

"The Negro need not bow his head like a bulrush in the presence of a
race whose records are as stained by crime and dishonor as theirs. Let
others decry the Negro, and say hard things about him, I am not prepared
to join in the chorus of depreciation."

After parting with the minister, Mr. Thomas resolved, if pluck and
energy were of any avail, that he would leave no stone unturned in
seeking employment. He searched the papers carefully for advertisements,
walked from one workshop to the other looking for work, and was
eventually met with a refusal which meant, no negro need apply. At last
one day when he had tried almost every workshop in the place, he entered
the establishment of Wm. C. Nell, an Englishman who had not been long
enough in America to be fully saturated by its Christless and inhuman
prejudices. He was willing to give Mr. Thomas work, and put tools in his
hands, and while watching how deftly he handled them, he did not notice
the indignant scowls on the faces of his workmen, and their murmurs of
disapprobation as they uttered their dissatisfaction one to the other.
At length they took off their aprons, laid down their tools and asked to
be discharged from work.

"Why, what does this mean?" asked the astounded Englishman.

"It means that we will not work with a nigger."

"Why, I don't understand? what is the matter with him?"

"Why, there's nothing the matter, only he's a nigger, and we never put
niggers on an equality with us, and we never will."

"But I am a stranger in this country, and I don't understand you."

"Well, he's a nigger, and we don't want niggers for nothing; would you
have your daughter marry a nigger?"

"Oh, go back to your work; I never thought of such a thing. I think the
Negro must be an unfortunate man, and I do not wish my daughter to marry
any unfortunate man, but if you do not want to work with him I will put
him by himself; there is room enough on the premises; will that suit you
any better?"

"No; we won't work for a man who employs a nigger."

The builder bit his lip; he had come to America hearing that it was a
land of liberty but he had found an undreamed of tyranny which had
entered his workshop and controlled his choice of workmen, and as much
as he deprecated the injustice, it was the dictum of a vitiated public
opinion that his field of occupation should be closed against the Negro,
and he felt that he was forced, either to give up his business or submit
to the decree.

Mr. Thomas then thought, "my money is vanishing, school rooms and
workshops are closed against me. I will not beg, and I can not resort to
any questionable means for bread. I will now take any position or do any
work by which I can make an honest living." Just as he was looking
gloomily at the future an old school mate laid his hand upon his
shoulder and said, "how do you do, old fellow? I have not seen you for a
week of Sundays. What are you driving at now?"

"Oh, nothing in particular. I am looking for work."

"Well, now this is just the ticket. I have just returned from the
Pacific coast and while I was there I did splendidly; everything I
touched turned to gold, and now I have a good job on hand if you are not
too squeamish to take it. I have just set up a tiptop restaurant and
saloon, and I have some of the best merchants of the city as my
customers, and I want a first rate clerk. You were always good at
figures and if you will accept the place come with me right away. Since
high license went into operation, I am making money hand over fist. It
is just like the big fish eating up the little fish. I am doing a
rushing business and I want you to do my clerking."

The first thought which rushed into Mr. Thomas' mind was, "Is thy
servant a dog that he should do this thing?" but he restrained his
indignation and said,

"No, Frank, I cannot accept your offer; I am a temperance man and a
prohibitionist, and I would rather have my hands clean than to have them
foul."

"You are a greater milksop than I gave you credit for. Here you are
hunting work, and find door after door closed against you, not because
you are not but because you are colored, and here am I offering you easy
employment and good wages and you refuse them."

"Frank," said Mr. Thomas, "I am a poor man, but I would rather rise up
early, and sit up late and eat the bread of carelessness, than to roll
in wealth by keeping a liquor saloon, and I am determined that no
drunkard shall ever charge me with having helped drag him down to
misery, shame and death. No drunkard's wife shall ever lay the wreck of
her home at my door."

"My business," said Frank Miller, "is a legitimate one; there is money
in it, and I am after that. If people will drink too much and make fools
of themselves I can't help it; it is none of my business, and if I don't
sell to them other people will. I don't think much of a man who does not
know how to govern himself, but it is no use arguing with you when you
are once set in your ways; good morning."




Chapter XII


It was a gala day in Tennis Court. Annette had passed a highly
successful examination, and was to graduate from the normal school, and
as a matter of course, her neighbors wanted to hear Annette "speak her
piece" as they called the commencement theme, and also to see how she
was going to behave before all "them people." They were, generally
speaking, too unaspiring to feel envious toward any one of their race
who excelled them intellectually, and so there was little or no jealousy
of Annette in Tennis Court; in fact some of her neighbors felt a kind of
pride in the thought that Tennis Court would turn out a girl who could
stand on the same platform and graduate alongside of some of their
employers' daughters. If they could not stand there themselves they were
proud that one of their race could.

"I feel," said one, "like the boy when some one threatened to slap off
his face who said 'you can slap off my face, but I have a big brother
and you can't slap off his face;'" and strange as it may appear, Annette
received more encouragement from a class of honest-hearted but ignorant
and well meaning people who knew her, than she did from some of the most
cultured and intelligent people of A.P. Nor was it very strange; they
were living too near the poverty, ignorance and social debasement of the
past to have developed much race pride, and a glowing enthusiasm in its
progress and development. Although they were of African descent, they
were Americans whose thoughts were too much Americanized to be wholly
free from imbibing the social atmosphere with which they were in
constant contact in their sphere of enjoyments. The literature they read
was mostly from the hands of white men who would paint them in any
colors which suited their prejudices or predilections. The religious
ideas they had embraced came at first thought from the same sources,
though they may have undergone modifications in passing through their
channels of thought, and it must be a remarkable man or woman who thinks
an age ahead of the generation in which his or her lot is cast, and who
plans and works for the future on the basis of that clearer vision. Nor
is it to be wondered at, if under the circumstances, some of the more
cultured of A.P. thought it absurd to look for anything remarkable to
come out of the black Nazareth of Tennis court. Her neighbors had an
idea that Annette was very smart; that she had a great "head piece," but
unless she left A.P. to teach school elsewhere, they did not see what
good her education was going to do her. It wasn't going to put any meal
in the barrel nor any potatoes in the bin. Even Mrs. Larkins relaxed her
ancient hostility to Annette and opened her heart to present her with a
basket of flowers. Annette within the last year had become very much
changed in her conduct and character. She had become friendly in her
manner and considerate in her behavior to Mrs. Larkins since she had
entered the church, during a protracted meeting. Annette was rather
crude in her religious views but here again Mrs. Lasette became her
faithful friend and advisor. In dealing with a young convert she thought
more was needed than getting her into the church and making her feel
that the moment she rose from the altar with rejoicing on her lips, that
she was a full blown christian. That, to Mrs. Lasette was the initial
step in the narrow way left luminous by the bleeding feet of Christ, and
what the young convert needed was to be taught how to walk worthy of her
high calling, and to make her life a thing of usefulness and
faithfulness to God and man, a growth in grace and in the saving
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Simply attired in a dress which Mrs.
Lasette thought fitted for the occasion, Annette took her seat quietly
on the platform and calmly waited till her turn came. Her subject was
announced: "The Mission of the Negro." It was a remarkable production
for a girl of her age. At first she portrayed an African family seated
beneath their bamboo huts and spreading palms; the light steps of the
young men and maidens tripping to music, dance and song; their pastimes
suddenly broken upon by the tramp of the merchants of flesh and blood;
the capture of defenceless people suddenly surprised in the midst of
their sports, the cries of distress, the crackling of flames, the cruel
oaths of reckless men, eager for gold though they coined it from tears
and extracted it from blood; the crowding of the slaveships, the horrors
of the middle passage, the landing of the ill-fated captives were
vividly related, and the sad story of ages of bondage. It seemed as if
the sorrow of centuries was sobbing in her voice. Then the scene
changed, and like a grand triumphal march she recounted the deliverance
of the Negro, and the wondrous change which had come over his condition;
the slave pen exchanged for the free school, the fetters on his wrist
for the ballot in his right hand. Then her voice grew musical when she
began to speak of the mission of the Negro, "His mission," she said, "is
grandly constructive." Some races had been "architects of destruction,"
but their mission was to build over the ruins of the dead past, the most
valuable thing that a man or woman could possess on earth, and that is
good character. That mission should be to bless and not to curse. To
lift up the banner of the Christian religion from the mire and dust into
which slavery and pride of caste had trailed it, and to hold it up as an
ensign of hope and deliverance to other races of the world, of whom the
greater portion were not white people. It seemed as if an inspiration
lit up the young face; her eye glowed with unwonted fervor; it seemed as
if she had fused her whole soul into the subject, which was full of
earnestness and enthusiasm. Her theme was the sensation of the hour. Men
grew thoughtful and attentive, women tender and sympathetic as they
heard this member of a once despised people, recount the trials and
triumphs of her race, and the hopes that gathered around their future.
The day before Annette graduated Mr. Thomas had met a friend of his at
Mrs. Lasette's, who had lately returned from an extensive tour. He had
mingled with many people and had acquired a large store of information.
Mr. Thomas had invited him to accompany him to the commencement. He had
expected that Annette would acquit herself creditably, but she had far
exceeded his most sanguine expectations. Clarence Luzerne had come
because his friend Mr. Thomas had invited him and because he and Mrs.
Lasette had taken such great interest in Annette's welfare, and his
curiosity was excited to see how she would acquit herself and compare
with the other graduates. He did not have much faith in graduating
essays. He had heard a number of such compositions at commencements
which had inspired him with glowing hopes for the future of the authors,
which he had never seen realized, and he had come more to gratify Mr.
Thomas than to please himself. But if he came through curiosity, he
remained through interest, which had become more and more absorbing as
she proceeded.

"Clarence," said Mr. Thomas to his friend, noticing the deep interest he
was manifesting, "Are you entranced? You appear perfectly spell-bound."

"Well, I am; I am really delighted and indebted to you for a rare and
unexpected pleasure. Why, that young lady gave the finest production
that I have heard this morning. I hardly think she could have written it
herself. It seems wonderful that a girl of her age should have done it
so well. You are a great friend of hers; now own up, are not your finger
marks upon it? I wouldn't tell it out of our ranks, but I don't think
she wrote that all herself."

"Who do you think wrote it for her?"

"Mrs. Lasette."

"I do not think so; Mrs. Lasette is a fine writer, but that nervous,
fervid and impassioned style is so unlike hers, that I do not think she
wrote one line of it, though she might have overlooked it, and made
some suggestions, but even if it were so that some one else wrote it, we
know that no one else delivered it, and that her delivery was
excellent."

"That is so; why, she excelled all the other girls. Do you know what was
the difference between her and the other girls?"

"No; what was it?" said Mr. Thomas.

"They wrote from their heads, she wrote from her heart. Annette has
begun to think; she has been left a great deal to herself, and in her
loneliness, she has developed a thoughtfulness past her years, and I
think that a love for her race and a desire to serve it has become a
growing passion in her soul; her heart has supplied her intellect."

"Ah, I think from what you say that I get the true clue to the power and
pathos with which she spoke this morning and that accounts for her
wonderful success."

"Yes," said Mr. Luzerne,[14] "it is the inner life which develops the
outer life, and just such young people as Annette make me more hopeful
of the future of the race."

Mrs. Lasette witnessed Annette's graduation with intense interest and
pleasure. Grandmother Harcourt looked the very impersonation of
satisfaction as she gathered up the floral gifts, and modestly waited
while Annette received the pleasant compliments of admiring friends.

At his request Mr. Thomas introduced Mr. Luzerne to Annette, who in the
most gracious and affable manner, tendered to Annette his hearty
congratulations which she modestly received, and for the time being all
went merry as a marriage bell.




Chapter XIII


"What a fool he is to refuse my offer," thought the saloon-keeper.
"What a pity it is," said Mr. Thomas to himself, "that a man of his
education and ability should be engaged in such accursed business."

After refusing the saloonkeeper's offer Mr. Thomas found a job of
work. It was not a job congenial to his feelings, but his motto was,
"If I do not see an opening I will make one." After he had turned
from Mr. Englishman's workshop, burning with a sense of wrong which
he felt powerless to overcome, he went on the levee and looked around
to see if any work might be picked up by him as a day laborer. He saw
a number of men singing, joking and plying their tasks with nimble
feet and apparently no other care upon their minds than meeting the
demands of the present hour, and for a moment he almost envied their
lightheartedness, and he thought within himself, where all men are born
blind, no man misses the light. These men are contented with privileges,
and I who have fitted myself for a different sphere in life, am chaffing
because I am denied rights. The right to sell my labor in any workshop
in this city same as the men of other nationalities, and to receive with
them a fair day's wages for a fair day's work. But he was strong and
healthy and he was too high spirited to sit moping at home depending
upon his mother to divide with him her scanty means till something
should turn up. The first thing that presented itself to him was the job
of helping unload a boat which had landed at the wharf, and a hand was
needed to assist in unloading her. Mr. Thomas accepted the position and
went to work and labored manfully at the unaccustomed task. That being
finished the merchant for whom he had done the work, hired him to labor
in his warehouse. He showed himself very handy in making slight repairs
when needed and being ready to turn his hand to any service out of his
routine of work, hammering a nail, adjusting a disordered lock and
showing a general concern in his employer's interests. One day his
employer had engaged a carpenter to make him a counter, but the man
instead of attending to his work had been off on a drunken spree, and
neglected to do the job. The merchant, vexed at the unnecessary delay,
said to Mr. Thomas in a bantering manner, "I believe you can do almost
anything, couldn't you make this counter?"

Mr. Thomas answered quite modestly, "I believe I could if I had my
tools."

"Tools! What do you mean by tools?"

Mr. Thomas told him how he learned to be a carpenter in the South and
how he had tried so unsuccessfully in the North to get an opportunity to
work at his trade until discouraged with the attempt, he had made up his
mind to take whatever work came to hand till he could see farther.

The merchant immediately procured the materials and set Mr. Thomas to
work, who in a short time finished the counter, and showed by his
workmanship that he was an excellent carpenter. The merchant pleased
with his work and satisfied with his ability, entrusted him with the
erection of a warehouse and, strange as it may appear, some of those men
who were too proud or foolish to work with him as a fellow laborer, were
humble enough to work under him as journeymen. When he was down they
were ready to kick him down. When he was up they were ready to receive
his helping hand. Mr. Thomas soon reached that "tide in his affairs
which taken at the flood leads on to fortune." Against the odds which
were against him his pluck and perseverance prevailed, and he was
enabled not only to build up a good business for himself, but also to
help others, and to teach them by his own experience not to be too
easily discouraged, but to trust to pluck more than luck, and learn in
whatever capacity they were employed to do their work heartily as unto
the Lord and not unto men.

Anxious to do what she could to benefit the community in which she
lived, Mrs. Lasette threw open her parlors for the gathering together
of the best thinkers and workers of the race, who choose to avail
themselves of the privilege of meeting to discuss any question of vital
importance to the welfare of the colored people of the nation. Knowing
the entail of ignorance which slavery had left them, she could not be
content by shutting up herself to mere social enjoyments within the
shadow of her home. And often the words would seem to ring within her
soul, "my people is destroyed for lack of knowledge," and with those
words would come the question, am I doing what I can to dispel the
darkness which has hung for centuries around our path? I have been
blessed with privileges which were denied others; I sat 'mid the light
of knowledge when some of my ill-fated sisters did not know what it was
to see daylight in their cabins from one week's end to the other.
Sometimes when she met with coldness and indifference where she least
expected it, she would grow sad but would not yield to discouragement.
Her heart was in the right place. "Freely she had received and freely
she would give." It was at one of Mrs. Lasette's gatherings that Mr.
Thomas met Rev. Mr. Lomax on whose church he had been refused a place,
and Mr. Thurman, a tradesman who also had been ousted from his position
through pride of caste and who had gone into another avocation, and
also Charley Cooper, of whom we have lost sight for a number of years.
He is now a steady and prosperous young man, a constant visitor at
Mrs. Lasette's. Rumor says that Mrs. Lasette's bright-eyed and lovely
daughter is the magnet which attracts him to their pleasant home. Rev.
Lomax has also been absent for several years on other charges, but when
he meets Mr. Thomas, the past flows back and the incidents of their
latest interviews naturally take their place in the conversation. "It
has been some time since we met," said Mr. Thomas, heartily shaking the
minister's hand.

"How has life used you since last we met?" said Rev. Lomax to Mr.
Thomas. "Are you well?"

"Perfectly well, I have had a varied experience since I met you, but
I have no reason to complain, and I think my experience has been
invaluable to me, and with this larger experience and closer
observation, I feel that I am more able to help others, and that, I
feel, has been one of my most valued acquirements. I sometimes think
of members of our people in some directions as sheep without a
shepherd, and I do wish from the bottom of my heart that I knew the
best way to help them."

"You do not," said the minister, somewhat anxiously, "ignore the power
of the pulpit."

"No, I do not; I only wish it had tenfold force. I wish we had ten
thousand ministers like Oberlin who was not ashamed to take the lead
in opening a road from Bande Roche to Strasburgh, a distance of several
miles to bring his parishioners in contact with the trade and business
of a neighboring village. I hope the time will come when every minister
in building a church which he consecrates to the worship of God will
build alongside of it or under the same roof, parish buildings or rooms
to be dedicated to the special wants of our people in their peculiar
condition."

"I do wish, Brother Lomax, those costly buildings which you erect will
cover more needs and wants of our people than some of them do now."

"What would you have in them?"

"I would have a parish building to every church, and I would have in
them an evening home for boys. I would have some persons come in and
teach them different handicrafts, so as at least to give them an
opportunity to be more expert in learning how to use their hands. I
would have that building a well warmed and well lighted room in winter,
where all should be welcome to come and get a sandwich and a warm cup
of tea or coffee and a hot bowl of soup, and if the grogshops were
selling liquor for five cents, I would sell the soup for three or four
cents, with a roll. I would have a room reserved for such ladies as Mrs.
Lasette, who are so willing to help, for the purpose of holding mother's
meetings. I would try to have the church the great centre of moral,
spiritual and intellectual life for the young, and try to present
counter attractions to the debasing influence of the low grogshops,
gambling dens and houses of ill fame."

"Part of our city (ought I confine myself to saying part of the city)
has not the whole city been cursed by rum? But I now refer to a special
part. I have seen church after church move out of that part of the city
where the nuisance and curse were so rife, but I never, to my knowledge,
heard of one of those churches offering to build a reading room and
evening home for boys, or to send out paid and sustained by their
efforts, a single woman to go into rum-cursed homes and teach their
inmates a more excellent way. I would have in that parish building the
most earnest men and women to come together and consult and counsel
with each other on the best means to open for ourselves, doors which
are still closed against us."

"I am sure," said the minister, "I am willing to do what I can for the
temporal and spiritual welfare of our people, and in this I have the
example of the great Physician who did not consider it beneath him to
attend to physical maladies as well as spiritual needs, and who did not
consider the synagogue too holy, nor the Sabbath day too sacred to
administer to the destitute and suffering."

"I was very sorry when I found out, Brother Thomas, that I could not
have you employed on my church, but I do not see what else I could have
done except submit."

"That was all you could have done in that stage of the work when I
applied, and I do not wish to bestow the slightest censure on you or the
trustees of your church, but I think, if when you were about to build
had you advertised for competent master-builders in the South, that you
could have gotten enough to have built the church without having
employed Mr. Hoog the master-builder. Had you been able to have gone to
him and said, 'we are about to build a church and it is more convenient
for us to have it done by our citizens than to send abroad for laborers.
We are in communication with a colored master builder in Kentucky, who
is known as an efficient workman and who would be glad to get the job,
and if your men refuse to work with a colored man our only alternative
will be to send for colored carpenters and put the building in their
hands.' Do you think he would have refused a thirty thousand dollar job
just because some of his men refused to work with colored men? I think
the greater portion of his workmen would have held their prejudices in
abeyance rather than let a thirty thousand dollar job slip out of their
hands. Now here is another thing in which I think united effort could
have effected something. Now, here is my friend Mr. Thurman; he was a
saddler versed in both branches of harness making. For awhile he got
steady work in a saddler's shop, but the prejudice against him was so
great that his employer was forced to dismiss him. He took work home,
but that did not heal the dissatisfaction, and at last he gave it up
and went to well-digging. Now, there were colored men in that place
who could have, as I think, invested some money in buying material
and helped him, not as a charity, but as a mere business operation
to set up a place for himself; he had the skill; they had the money,
and had they united both perhaps to-day there would be a flourishing
business carried on by the man who is now digging wells for a living.
I do hope that some time there will be some better modes of
communication between us than we now possess; that a labor bureau
will be established not as a charity among us, but as a business
with capable and efficient men who will try to find out the different
industries that will employ men irrespective of color and advertise
and find steady and reliable colored men to fill them. Colored men
in the South are largely employed in raising cotton and other produce;
why should there not be more openings in the South for colored men
to handle the merchandize and profit by it?"

"What hinders?" said Rev. Lomax.

"I will not say what hinders, but I will say what I think you can try
to do to help. Teach our young to dedicate their young lives to the
noble service of devoting them to the service of our common cause; to
throw away their cigars, dash down the foaming beer and sparkling wine
and strive to be more like those of whom it was said, 'I write unto you,
young men, because you are strong.'"




Chapter XIV


Grandmother Harcourt was failing. Annette was rising towards life's
summit. Her grandmother was sinking to death's vale.

  The hours are rifting day by day
  Strength from the walls of living clay.

Her two children who were living in A.P. wished her to break up her home
and come and live with them. They had room in their hearts and homes for
her, but not for Annette. There was something in Annette's temperament
with which other members of the family could not harmonize. They were
not considerate enough to take into account her antenatal history, and
to pity where they were so ready to condemn. Had Annette been born
deficient in any of her bodily organs, they could have made allowance
for her, and would have deemed it cruel to have demanded that she should
have performed the same amount of labor with one hand that she could
have done with both. They knew nothing of heredity, except its effects,
which they were not thoughtful enough to trace back to the causes over
which Annette had no control, and instead of trying to counteract them
as one might strive to do in a case of inherited physical tendencies,
they only aggravated, and constantly strengthened all the unlovely
features in Annette's character, and Annette really seemed like an
anomalous contradiction. There was a duality about her nature as if
the blood of two races were mingling in her veins. To some persons
Annette was loving and love-able, bright, intelligent, obliging and
companionable; to others, unsociable, unamiable and repelling. Her heart
was like a harp which sent out its harmonious discords in accordance
with the moods of the player who touched its chords. To some who swept
them it gave out tender and touching melody, to others its harshest and
saddest discords. Did not the Psalmist look beneath the mechanism of the
body to the constitution of the soul when he said that "We are fearfully
and wonderfully made?"

But the hour came when all discussion was ended as to who was to shelter
the dear old grandmother in her declining years. Mrs. Harcourt was
suddenly paralyzed, and in a few days Annette stood doubly orphaned.
Grandmother Harcourt's children gathered around the bedside of their
dying mother. She was conscious but unable to speak. Occasionally her
eyes would rest lovingly upon Annette and then turn wistfully to her
children. Several times she assayed to speak, but the words died upon
her lips. Her eldest son entered the room just as life was trembling on
its faintest chords. She recognized him, and gathering up her remaining
strength she placed his hand on Annette's, and tried again to speak. He
understood her and said very tenderly,

"Mother, I will look after Annette."

All the care faded from the dear old face. Amid the shadows that never
deceive flitted a smile of peace and contentment. The fading eye lit up
with a sudden gaze of joy and wonder. She reached out her hand as if to
meet a welcome and precious friend, and then the radiant face grew
deathly pale; the outstretched hands relaxed their position, and with a
smile, just such a smile as might greet a welcoming angel, her spirit
passed out into the eternities, and Annette felt as she had never felt
before, that she was all alone. The love that had surrounded and watched
over her, born with her perverseness, and sheltered her in its warm
clasp, was gone; it had faded suddenly from her vision, and left in its
stead a dull and heavy pain. After the funeral, Mrs. Harcourt's children
returned to the house where they quietly but earnestly discussed the
question what shall be done with Annette. Mrs. Hanson's house was rather
small; that is, it was rather small for Annette. She would have found
room in her house if she only had room in her heart for her. She had
nursed her mother through her sickness, and said with unnatural
coldness, "I have got rid of one trouble and I do not want another."
Another sister who lived some distance from A.P., would have taken
Annette, but she knew that other members of her family would object, as
they would be fearful that Annette would be an apple of discord among
them. At length, her uncle Thomas decided that she should go with him.
He felt that his mother had died with the assurance on her mind that he
would care for Annette, and he resolved to be faithful in accepting what
was to him the imposition of a new burden on his shoulders. His wife was
a cold and unsympathizing woman. She was comfortably situated but did
not wish that comfort invaded by her husband's relations. In household
matters her husband generally deferred to her judgment, but here was no
other alternative than that of taking Annette under the shadow of his
home, or leaving her unprotected in the wide world, and he was too
merciful and honorable to desert Annette in her saddest hour of need.
Having determined that Annette should share his home, he knew that it
was advisable to tell his wife about his decision, and to prepare her
for Annette's coming.

"Well," said Dr. Harcourt's wife after her husband's return from the
funeral, "what are you going to do with Annette?"

"She is coming here," said Dr. Harcourt quietly and firmly.

"Coming here?" said Mrs. Harcourt, looking aghast. "I think at least you
might have consulted me."

"That is true, my dear, I would have gladly done so had you been present
when the decision was made."

"But where are her aunts, and where was your brother, John; why didn't
they take her?"

"John was at home sick with the rheumatism and sister Jane did not
appear to be willing to have her come."

"I guess Jane is like I am; got enough to do to look after her own
family."

"And sister Eliza said she hadn't any room."

"No room; when she has eight rooms in her house and only two children?
She could have made room for her had she chosen."

"May be her husband wasn't willing."

"Oh, it is no such thing. I know John Hanson[15] better than that; Liza
is the head man of that house, and just leads him by the nose wherever
she wants him to go, and besides, Mrs. Lord's daughter is there
pretending to pay board, but I don't believe that she pays it one-half
the time."

"She is company for Alice and they all seem very fond of her."

"I do get so sick of that girl, mambying and jambying about that family;
calling Liza and her husband 'Ma and Pa,' I haven't a bit of faith in
her."

"Well, I confess that I am not very much preposessed in her favor. She
just puts me in mind of a pussy cat purring around you."

"Well, now as to Annette. You do not want her here?"

"Not if I can help it."

"But can't she help you to work?"

"She could if she knew how. If wishes were horses beggars might ride.
Your mother made a great mistake in bringing Annette up. Annette has a
good education, but when that is said, all is said."

"Why, my dear mother was an excellent housekeeper. Did she not teach
Annette?"

"Your mother was out a great deal as a sick nurse, and when she went
away from home she generally boarded Annette with a friend, who did not,
as your mother paid her good board, exact any service from Annette, and
while with her she never learned to make a loaf of bread or to cook a
beefsteak, and when your mother was at home when she set Annette to do
any work, if she did it awkwardly and clumsily she would take it out of
her hand and do it herself rather than bother with her, and now I
suppose I am to have all the bother and worry with her."

"Well my dear."

"Oh don't come dearing me, and bringing me all this trouble."

"Well my dear, I don't see how it could be helped. I could not leave
Annette in the house all by herself. I couldn't afford to make myself
the town's talk. May be things will turn out better than you expect.
We've got children of our own, and we don't know when we are gone, how
they will fare."

"That is true, but I never mean to bring my children up in such a way
that they will be no use anywhere, and no one will want them."

"Well, I don't see any other way than bringing Annette here."

"Well, if I must, I must," she said with an air of despondency.

Dr. Harcourt rode over to his sister's where Annette was spending the
day and brought the doubly orphaned girl to his home. As she entered the
room, it seemed as though a chill struck to her heart when her Aunt bade
her good morning. There was no warm pressure in the extended hand. No
loving light in the cold unsympathizing eyes which seemed to stab her
through and through. The children eyed her inquisitively, as if wishing
to understand her status with their parents before they became sociable
with her. After supper Annette's uncle went out and her aunt sat quietly
and sewed till bed time, and then showed Annette to her room and left
the lonely girl to herself and her great sorrow. Annette sat silent,
tearless, and alone. Grief had benumbed her faculties. She had sometimes
said when grandmother had scolded her that "she was growing cross and
cold." But oh, what would she not have given to have had the
death-created silence broken by that dear departed voice, to have felt
the touch of a vanished hand, to have seen again the loving glance of
the death darkened eye. But it was all over; no tears dimmed her eye, as
she sat thinking so mournfully of her great sorrow, till she unfastened
from her neck a little keepsake containing a lock of grandmother's hair,
then all the floodgates of her soul were opened and she threw herself
upon her bed and sobbed herself to sleep. In the morning she awoke with
that sense of loss and dull agony which only they know, who have seen
the grave close over all they have held dearest on earth. The beautiful
home of her uncle was very different from the humble apartments; here
she missed all the freedom and sunshine that she had enjoyed beneath the
shelter of her grandmother's roof.

"Can you sew?" said her aunt to Annette, as she laid on the table a
package of handkerchiefs.

"Yes ma'm."

"Let me see how you can do this," handing her one to hem. Annette hemmed
the handkerchief nicely; her aunt examined it, put it down and gave her
some others to hem, but there was no word of encouragement for her, not
even a pleasant, "well done." They both relapsed into silence; between
them there was no pleasant interchange of thought. Annette was tolerated
and endured, but she did not feel that she was loved and welcomed. It
was no place to which she could invite her young friends to spend a
pleasant evening. Once she invited some of her young friends to her
home, but she soon found that it was a liberty which she should be
careful never to repeat. Soon after Annette came to live with her aunt
her aunt's mother had a social gathering and reunion of the members of
her family. All Dr. Harcourt's children were invited, from the least to
the greatest, but poor Annette was left behind. Mrs. Lasette, who
happened in the house the evening before the entertainment, asked, "Is
not Annette going?" when Mrs. Harcourt replied, very coldly, "She is not
one of the family," referring to her mother's family circle.

A shadow flitted over the face of Mrs. Lasette; she thought of her own
daughter and how sad it would be to have her live in such a chilly
atmosphere of social repression and neglect at a period of life when
there was so much danger that false friendship might spread their lures
for her inexperienced feet. I will criticize, she said to herself, by
creation. I, too, have some social influence, if not among the careless,
wine-bibbing, ease-loving votaries of fashion, among some of the most
substantial people of A.P., and as long as Annette preserves her
rectitude at my house she shall be a welcome guest and into that
saddened life I will bring all the sunshine that I can.




Chapter XV


"Well mama," said Mrs. Lasette's daughter to her mother, "I cannot
understand why you take so much interest in Annette. She is very
unpopular. Scarcely any of the girls ever go with her, and even her
cousin never calls for her to go to church or anywhere else, and I
sometimes feel so sorry to see her so much by herself, and some of the
girls when I went with her to the exposition, said that they wouldn't
have asked her to have gone with them, that she isn't our set."

"Poor child," Mrs. Lasette replied; "I am sorry for her. I hope that you
will never treat her unkindly, and I do not think if you knew the sad
story connected with her life that you would ever be unkind enough to
add to the burden she has been forced to bear."

"But mamma, Annette is so touchy. Her aunt says that her tear bags must
lay near her eyes and that she will cry if you look at her, and that she
is the strangest, oddest creature she ever saw, and I heard she did not
wish her to come."

"Why, my dear child, who has been gossipping to you about your
neighbors?"

"Why, Julia Thomas."

"Well, my daughter, don't talk after her; gossip is liable to degenerate
into evil speaking and then I think it tends to degrade and belittle the
mind to dwell on the defects and imperfections of our neighbors. Learn
to dwell on the things that are just and true and of good report, but I
am sorry for Annette, poor child."

"What makes her so strange, do you know?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Lasette somewhat absently.

"If you do, won't you tell me?"

Again Mrs. Lasette answered in the same absent manner.

"Why mama, what is the matter with you; you say yes to everything and
yet you are not paying any attention to anything that I say. You seem
like someone who hears, but does not listen; who sees, but does not
look. Your face reminds me of the time when I showed you the picture of
a shipwreck and you said, 'My brother's boat went down in just such a
fearful storm.'"

"My dear child," said Mrs. Lasette, rousing up from a mournful reverie,
"I was thinking of a wreck sadder, far sadder than the picture you
showed me. It was the mournful wreck of a blighted life."

"Whose life, mama?"

"The life of Annette's [grand]mother. We were girls together and I loved
her dearly," Mrs. Lasette replied as tears gathered in her eyes when she
recalled one of the saddest memories of her life.

"Do tell me all about it, for I am full of curiosity."

"My child, I want this story to be more than food for your curiosity; I
want it to be a lesson and a warning to you. Annette's grandmother was
left to struggle as breadwinner for a half dozen children when her
husband died. Then there were not as many openings for colored girls as
there are now. Our chief resource was the field of domestic service, and
circumstances compelled Annette's mother to live out, as we called it.
In those days we did not look down upon a girl and try to ostracize her
from our social life if she was forced to be a servant. If she was poor
and respectable we valued her for what she was rather than for what she
possessed. Of course we girls liked to dress nicely, but fine clothes
was not the chief passport to our society, and yet I think on the whole
that our social life would compare favorably with yours in good
character, if not in intellectual attainments. Our dear old mothers were
generally ignorant of books, but they did try to teach good manners and
good behavior; but I do not think they saw the danger around the paths
of the inexperienced with the same clearness of vision we now do. Mrs.
Harcourt had unbounded confidence in her children, and as my mother
thought, gave her girls too much rein in their own hands. Our mother was
more strict with her daughters and when we saw Mrs. Harcourt's daughters
having what we considered such good times, I used to say, 'O, I wish
mother wasn't so particular!' Other girls could go unattended to
excursions, moonlight drives and parties of pleasure, but we never went
to any such pleasure unless we were attended by our father, brother or
some trusted friend of the family. We were young and foolish then and
used to chafe against her restrictions; but to-day, when I think of my
own good and noble husband, my little bright and happy home, and my
dear, loving daughter, I look back with gratitude to her thoughtful care
and honor and bless her memory in her grave. Poor Lucy Harcourt was not
so favored; she was pretty and attractive and had quite a number of
admirers. At length she became deeply interested in a young man who came
as a stranger to our city. He was a fine looking man, but there was
something about him from which I instinctively shrank. My mother felt
the same way and warned us to be careful how we accepted any attention
from him; but poor Lucy became perfectly infatuated with him and it was
rumored that they were to be shortly married. Soon after the rumor he
left the city and there was a big change in Lucy's manner. I could not
tell what was the matter, but my mother forbade me associating with her,
and for several months I scarcely saw her, but I could hear from others
that she was sadly changed. Instead of being one of the most
light-hearted girls, I heard that she used to sit day after day in her
mother's house and wring her hands and weep and that her mother's heart
was almost broken. Friends feared that Lucy was losing her mind and
might do some desperate deed, but she did not. I left about that time to
teach school in a distant village, and when I returned home I heard sad
tidings of poor Lucy. She was a mother, but not a wife. Her brothers had
grown angry with her for tarnishing their family name, of which they
were so proud; her mother's head was bowed with agony and shame. The
father of Lucy's child had deserted her in her hour of trial and left
her to bear her burden alone with the child like a millstone around her
neck. Poor Lucy; I seldom saw her after that, but one day I met her in
the Park. I went up to her and kissed her, she threw her arms around me
and burst into a flood of tears. I tried to restrain her from giving
such vent to her feelings. It was a lack of self-control which had
placed her where she was."

"'Oh Anna!' she said, 'it does me so much good to hold your hand in mine
once more. I reminds me of the days when we used to be together. Oh,
what would I give to recall those days.'"

"I said to her, Lucy, you can never recall the past, but you can try to
redeem the future. Try to be a faithful mother. Men may build over the
wreck and ruin of their young lives a better and brighter future, why
should not a woman? Let the dead past bury its dead and live in the
future for the sake of your child. She seemed so grateful for what I had
said. Others had treated her with scorn. Her brother Thomas had refused
to speak to her; her betrayer had forsaken her; all the joyousness had
faded from her life and, poor girl, I was glad that I was able to say a
helpful and hopeful word to her. Mother, of course, would not let us
associate with her, but she always treated her kindly when she came and
did what she could to lighten the burden which was pressing her down to
the grave. But, poor child, she was never again the same light-hearted
girl. She grew pale and thin and in the hectic flush and faltering
tread I read the death sign of early decay, and I felt that my misguided
young friend was slowly dying of a broken heart. Then there came a day
when we were summoned to her dying bed. Her brothers and sisters were
present; all their resentment against her had vanished in the presence
of death. She was their dear sister about to leave them and they bent in
tearful sorrow around her couch. As one of her brothers, who was a good
singer, entered the room, she asked him to sing 'Vital spark of heavenly
flame.' He attempted to sing, but there were tremors in his voice and he
faltered in the midst of the hymn. 'Won't you sing for your dying
sister.'"

"Again he essayed to sing, but [his?] voice became choked with emotion,
and he ceased, and burst into tears. Her brother Thomas who had been so
hard and cold, and had refused to speak to her, now wept and sobbed like
a child, but Lucy smiled as she bade them good bye, and exclaimed,
'Welcome death, the end of fear. I am prepared to die.' A sweet peace
settled down on her face, and Lucy had exchanged, I hope, the sorrow and
pain of life for the peace and rest of heaven, and left Annette too
young to know her loss. Do you wonder then my child that I feel such an
interest in Annette and that knowing as I do her antenatal history that
I am ever ready to pity where others condemn, and that I want to do what
I can to help round out in beauty and usefulness the character of that
sinned against and disinherited child, whose restlessness and
sensitiveness I trace back to causes over which she had no control."

"What became of Frank Miller? You say that when he returned to A.P. that
society opened its doors to him while they were closed to Annette's
mother. I don't understand it. Was he not as guilty as she was?"

"Guiltier, I think. If poor Lucy failed as a woman, she tried to be
faithful as a mother, while he, faithless as a man, left her to bear her
burden alone. She was frail as a woman, but he was base, mean, and
selfish as a man."

"How was it that society received him so readily?"

"All did not receive him so readily, but with some his money, like
charity, covered a multitude of sins. But from the depths of my heart I
despised him. I had not then learned to hate the sin with all my heart,
and yet the sinner love. To me he was the incarnation of social meanness
and vice. And just as I felt I acted. We young folks had met at a social
gathering, and were engaged in a pastime in which we occasionally
clasped hands together. Some of these plays I heartily disliked,
especially when there was romping and promiscuous kissing. During the
play Frank Miller's hand came in contact with mine and he pressed it. I
can hardly describe my feelings. It seemed as if my very veins were on
fire, and that every nerve was thrilling with repulsion and indignation.
Had I seen him murder Lucy and then turn with blood dripping hands to
grasp mine, I do not think that I should have felt more loathing than I
did when his hand clasped mine. I felt that his very touch was
pollution; I immediately left the play, tore off my glove, and threw it
in the fire."

"Oh, mother, how could you have done so? You are so good and gentle."

Mrs. Lasette replied, "I was not always so. I do not hate his sin any
less now than I did then but I think that I have learned a Christian
charity which would induce me to pluck such as he out of the fire while
I hated the garments spotted by his sins. I sat down trembling with
emotion. I heard a murmur of disapprobation. There was a check to the
gayety of the evening. Frank Miller, bold and bad as he was looked
crestfallen and uneasy. Some who appeared to be more careful of the
manners of society than its morals, said that I was very rude. Others
said that I was too prudish, and would be an old maid, that I was
looking for perfection in young men, and would not find it. That young
men sow their wild oats, and that I was more nice than wise, and that I
would frighten the gentlemen away from me. I told them if the young men
were so easily frightened, that I did not wish to clasp hands for life
with any such timid set, and that I was determined that I would have a
moral husband or none; that I was not obliged to be married, but that I
was obliged to be true to my conscience. That when I married I expected
to lay the foundation of a new home, and that I would never trust my
future happiness in the hands of a libertine, or lay its foundations
over the reeling brain of a drunkard, and I determined that I would
never marry a man for whose vices I must blush, and whose crimes I must
condone; that while I might bend to grief I would not bow to shame; that
if I brought him character and virtue, he should give me true manhood
and honor in return."

"And I think mother that you got it when you married father."

"I am satisfied that I did, and the respect and appreciation my daughter
has for her father is only part of my life's reward, but it was my dear
mother who taught me to distinguish between the true and the false, and
although she was [not?] what you call educated, she taught me that no
magnificence of fortune would atone for meanness of spirit, that without
character the most wealthy and talented man is a bankrupt in soul. And
she taught me how to be worthy of a true man's love."

"And I think you have succeeded splendidly."

"Thank you, my darling. But mother has become used to compliments."




Chapter XVI


"I do not think she gets any more than she deserves," said Mr. Lasette,
entering the room. "She is one of whom it may be said, 'Her children
arise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praiseth her;
many daughters have done virtuously but thou excellest them all.'"

"I do not think you will say that I am excelling if I do not haste
about your supper; you were not home to dinner and must be hungry by
this time, and it has been said that the way to a man's heart is through
his stomach."

"Oh, isn't that a libel on my sex!"

"Papa," said Laura Lasette, after her mother had left the room, "did you
know Frank Miller? Mother was telling me about him but she did not
finish; what became of him?"

"Now, you ask me two questions in one breath; let me answer one at a
time."

"Well, papa, I am all attention."

"Do I know Frank Miller, the saloon keeper? Yes; he is connected with a
turning point in my life. How so? Well, just be patient a minute and I
will tell you. I was almost a stranger in A.P. when I first met your
mother. It was at a social where Frank Miller was a guest. I had heard
some very damaging reports concerning his reputation, but from the
manner in which he was received in society, I concluded that I had been
misinformed. Surely, I thought, if the man is as vicious as he has been
represented, good women, while they pity him, will shrink instinctively
from him, but I saw to my surprise, that with a confident and unblushing
manner, he moved among what was called the elite of the place, and that
instead of being withheld, attentions were lavished upon him. I had
lived most of my life in a small inland town, where people were old
fashioned enough to believe in honor and upright conduct, and from what
I had heard of Frank Miller I was led to despise his vices and detest
his character, and yet here were women whom I believed to be good and
virtuous, smiling in his face, and graciously receiving his attentions.
I cannot help thinking that in their case,

  "Evil is wrought by want of thought"
   As well as want of heart.

They were not conscious of the influence they might exert by being true
to their own womanhood. Men like Frank Miller are the deadliest foes of
women. One of the best and strongest safe guards of the home is the
integrity of its women, and he who undermines that, strikes a fearful
blow at the highest and best interests of society. Society is woman's
realm and I never could understand how, if a woman really loves purity
for its own worth and loveliness, she can socially tolerate men whose
lives are a shame, and whose conduct in society is a blasting, withering
curse."

"But, papa, tell me how you came to love my mother; but I don't see how
you could have helped it."

"That's just it, my daughter. I loved her because I could not help it;
and respected her because I knew that she was worthy of respect. I was
present at a social gathering where Frank was a guest, and was watching
your mother attentively when I saw her shrink instinctively from his
touch and leave the play in which she was engaged and throw her glove in
the fire. Public opinion was divided about her conduct. Some censured,
others commended her, but from that hour I learned to love her, and I
became her defender. Other women would tolerate Frank Miller, but here
was a young and gracious girl, strong enough and brave enough to pour on
the head of that guilty culprit her social disapprobation and I gloried
in her courage. I resolved she should be my wife if she would accept me,
which she did, and I have never regretted my choice and I think that I
have had as happy a life as usually falls to the lot of mortals."




Chapter XVII


"Papa," said Laura Lasette, "all the girls have had graduating parties
except Annette and myself. Would it not be nice for me to have a party
and lots of fun, and then my birthday comes next week; now wouldn't it
be just the thing for me to have a party?"

"It might be, darling, for you, but how would it be for me who would
have to foot the bill?"

"Well, papa, could you not just give me a check like you do mama
sometimes?"

"But mama knows how to use it."

"But papa, don't I know how also?"

"I have my doubts on that score, but let me refer you to your mother.
She is queen of this realm, and in household matters I as a loyal
subject, abide by her decisions."

"Well, I guess mama is all right on this subject."

Mrs. Lasette was perfectly willing to gratify her daughter, and it was
decided to have an entertainment on Laura's birthday.

The evening of Mrs. Lasette's entertainment came bringing with it into
her pleasant parlors a bright and merry throng of young people. It was
more than a mere pleasure party. It was here that rising talent was
encouraged, no matter how humble the garb of the possessor, and Mrs.
Lasette was a model hostess who would have thought her entertainment a
failure had any one gone from it smarting under a sense of social
neglect. Shy and easily embarrassed Annette who was very seldom invited
anywhere, found herself almost alone in that gay and chattering throng.
Annette was seated next to several girls who laughed and chatted
incessantly with each other without deigning to notice her. Mrs. Lasette
entering the room with Mr. Luzerne whom she presented to the company,
and noticing the loneliness and social isolation of Annette, gave him a
seat beside her, and was greatly gratified that she had found the means
to relieve the tedium of Annette's position. Mrs. Lasette had known him
as a light hearted boy, full of generous impulses, with laughing eyes
and a buoyant step, but he had been absent a number of years, and had
developed into a handsome man with a magnificent physique, elegant in
his attire, polished in his manners and brilliant in conversation. Just
such a man as is desirable as a companion and valuable as a friend,
staunch, honorable and true, and it was rumored that he was quite
wealthy. He was generally cheerful, but it seemed at times as if some
sad memories came over him, dashing all the sunshine from his face and
leaving in its stead, a sadness which it was touching to behold. Some
mystery seemed to surround his life, but being reticent in reference to
his past history, there was a dignity in his manner which repelled all
intrusion into the secrecy over which he choose to cast a veil. Annette
was not beautiful, but her face was full of expression and her manner
winsome at times. Lacking social influence and social adaptation, she
had been ignored in society, her faults of temper made prominent her
most promising traits of character left unnoticed, but this treatment
was not without some benefit to Annette. It threw her more entirely on
her own resources. At first she read when she had leisure, to beguile
her lonely hours, and fortunately for her, she was directed in her
reading by Mrs. Lasette, who gave and lent her books, which appealed to
all that was highest and best in her nature, and kindled within her a
lofty enthusiasm to make her life a blessing to the world. With such an
earnest purpose, she was not prepared to be a social favorite in any
society whose chief amusement was gossip, and whose keenest weapon was
ridicule.

Mr. Luzerne had gone to Mrs. Lasette's with the hope of meeting some of
the best talent in A.P., and had come to the conclusion that there was
more lulliancy than depth in the intellectual life with which he came in
contact; he felt that it lacked earnestness, purpose and grand
enthusiasms and he was astonished to see the social isolation of
Annette, whose society had interested and delighted him, and after
parting with her he found his mind constantly reverting to her and felt
grateful to Mrs. Lasette for affording him a rare and charming pleasure.
Annette sat alone in her humble room with a new light in her eyes and a
sense of deep enjoyment flooding her soul. Never before had she met
with such an interesting and congenial gentleman. He seemed to
understand as scarcely as any one else had done or cared to do. In the
eyes of other guests she had been treated as if too insignificant for
notice, but he had loosened her lips and awakened within her a dawning
sense of her own ability, which others had chilled and depressed. He had
fingered the keys of her soul and they had vibrated in music to his
touch. Do not smile, gentle reader, and say that she was very easily
impressed, it may be that you have never known what it is to be hungry,
not for bread, but for human sympathy, to live with those who were never
interested in your joys, nor sympathized in your sorrows. To whom your
coming gave no joy and your absence no pain. Since Annette had lost her
grandmother, she had lived in an atmosphere of coldness and repression
and was growing prematurely cold. Her heart was like a sealed fountain
beneath whose covering the bright waters dashed and leaped in imprisoned
boundary. Oh, blessed power of human love to lighten human suffering,
well may we thank the giver of every good and perfect gift for the love
which gladdens hearts, brightens homes and sets the solitary in the
midst of families. Mr. Luzerne frequently saw Annette at the house of
Mrs. Lasette and occasionally called at her uncle's, but there was an
air of restraint in the social atmosphere which repressed and chilled
him. In that home he missed the cordial freedom and genial companionship
which he always found at Mrs. Lasette's but Annette's apparent
loneliness and social isolation awakened his sympathy, and her bright
intelligence and good character commanded his admiration and respect,
which developed within him a deep interest for the lovely girl. He often
spoke admiringly of her and never met her at church, or among her
friends that he did not gladly avail himself of the opportunity of
accompanying her home. Madame rumor soon got tidings of Mr. Luzerne's
attentions to Annette and in a shout the tongues of the gossips of A.P.
began to wag. Mrs. Larkins who had fallen heir to some money, moved out
of Tennis court, and often gave pleasant little teas to her young
friends, and as a well spread table was quite a social attraction in
A.P., her gatherings were always well attended. After rumor had caught
the news of Mr. Luzerne's interest in Annette, Mrs. Larkins had a social
at her house to which she invited him, and a number of her young
friends, but took pains to leave Annette out in the cold. Mr. Luzerne on
hearing that Annette was slighted, refused to attend. At the supper
table Annette's prospects were freely discussed.

"I expected that Mr. Luzerne would have been here this evening, but he
sent an apology in which he declined to come."

"Did you invite Annette?" said Miss Croker.

"No, I did not. I got enough of her when I lived next door to her."

"Well that accounts for Mr. Luzerne's absence. They remind me of the
Siamese twins; if you see one, you see the other."

"How did she get in with him?"

"She met him at Mrs. Lasette's party, and he seemed so taken up with her
that for a while he had neither eyes nor ears for any one else."

"That girl, as quiet as she looks, is just as deep as the sea."

"It is not that she's so deep, but we are so shallow. Miss Booker and
Miss Croker were sitting near Annette and not noticing her, and we girls
were having a good time in the corner to ourselves, and Annette was
looking so lonely and embarrassed I think Mr. Luzerne just took pity on
her and took especial pains to entertain her. I just think we stepped
our feet into it by slighting Annette, and of course, as soon as we saw
him paying attention to her, we wouldn't change and begin to make much
of her."

"I don't know what he sees in Annette with her big nose and plain face."

"My father," said Laura Lasette, "says that Annette is a credit to her
race and my mother is just delighted because Mr. Luzerne is attracted
to her, but, girls, had we not better be careful how we talk about her?
People might say that we are jealous of her and we know that we are
taught that jealousy is as cruel as the grave."

"We don't see anything to be jealous about her. She is neither pretty
nor stylish."

"But my mother says she is a remarkable girl," persisted Laura.

"Your mother," said Mrs. Larkins, "always had funny notions about
Annette, and saw in her what nobody else did."

"Well, for my part, I hope it will be a match."

"It is easy enough for you to say so, Laura. You think it is a sure
thing between you and Charley Cooper, but don't be too sure; there's
many a slip between the cup and the lip."

There was a flush on Laura's cheek as she replied, "If there are a
thousand slips between the cup and the lip and Charlie and I should
never marry, let me tell you that I would almost as soon court another's
husband as a girl's affianced lover. I can better afford to be an old
maid than to do a dishonorable thing."

"Well, Laura, you are a chip off the old block; just like your mother,
always ready to take Annette's part."

"I think, Mrs. Larkins, it is the finest compliment you can pay me, to
tell me that I am like my dear mother."




Chapter XVIII


"Good morning," said Mr. Luzerne, entering Mr. Thomas' office. "Are you
busy?"

"Not very; I had just given some directions to my foreman concerning a
job I have undertaken, and had just settled down to read the paper. Well
how does your acquaintance with Miss Harcourt prosper? Have you popped
the question yet?"

"No, not exactly; I had been thinking very seriously of the matter, but
I have been somewhat shaken in my intention."

"How so," said Mr. Thomas, laying down his paper and becoming suddenly
interested.

"You know that I have had an unhappy marriage which has overshadowed all
my subsequent life, and I cannot help feeling very cautious how I risk,
not only my own, but another's happiness in a second marriage. It is
true that I have been thinking of proposing to Miss Harcourt and I do
prefer her to any young lady I have ever known; but there is a
depreciatory manner in which people speak of her, that sorely puzzles
me. For instance, when I ask some young ladies if they know Annette,
they shrug their shoulders, look significantly at each other and say,
'Oh, yes, we know her; but she don't care for anything but books; oh she
is so self conceited and thinks she knows more than any one else.' But
when I spoke to Mrs. Larkins about her, she said Annette makes a fine
appearance, but all is not gold that glitters. By this time my curiosity
was excited, and I asked, 'What is the matter with Miss Harcourt? I had
no idea that people were so ready to pick at her.' She replied, 'No
wonder; she is such a spitfire.'"

"Well," said Mr. Thomas, a little hotly, "if Annette is a spitfire, Mrs.
Larkins is a lot of combustion. I think of all the women I know, she has
the greatest genius for aggravation. I used to board with her, but as I
did not wish to be talked to death I took refuge in flight."

"And so you showed the white feather that time."

"Yes, I did, and I could show it again. I don't wonder that people have
nick-named her 'Aunty talk forever.' I have known Annette for years and
I known that she is naturally quick tempered and impulsive, but she is
not malicious and implacable and if I were going to marry to-morrow I
would rather have a quick, hot-tempered woman than a cold, selfish one,
who never thought or cared about anyone but herself. Mrs. Larkins' mouth
is not a prayer-book; don't be uneasy about anything she says against
Annette."

Reassured by Mr. Thomas, Clarence Luzerne decided that he would ask Dr.
Harcourt's permission to visit his niece, a request which was readily
granted and he determined if she would consent that she should be his
wife. He was wealthy, handsome and intelligent; Annette was poor and
plain, but upright in character and richly endowed in intellect, and no
one imagined that he would pass by the handsome and stylish girls of
A.P. to bestow his affections on plain, neglected Annette. Some of the
girls who knew of his friendship for Annette, but who never dreamed of
its termination in marriage would say to Annette, "Speak a good word for
me to Mr. Luzerne;" but Annette kept her counsel and would smile and
think: I will speak a good word for myself. Very pleasant was the
growing friendship between Annette and Mr. Luzerne. Together they read
and discussed books and authors and agreed with wonderful unanimity,
which often expressed itself in the words:

"I think as you do." Not that there was any weak compliance for the sake
of agreement, but a unison of thought and feeling between them which
gave a pleasurable zest to their companionship.

"Miss Annette," said Luzerne, "do you believe that matches are made in
heaven?"

"I never thought anything about it."

"But have you no theory on the subject?"

"Not the least; have you?"

"Yes; I think that every human soul has its counterpart, and is never
satisfied till soul has met with soul and recognized its spiritual
affinity."

"Affinity! I hate the word."

"Why?"

"Because I think it has been so wrongly used, and added to the social
misery of the world."

"What do you think marriage ought to be?"

"I think it should be a blending of hearts, an intercommunion of souls,
a tie that only love and truth should weave, and nothing but death
should part."

Luzerne listened eagerly and said, "Why, Miss Annette, you speak as if
you had either loved or were using your fine imaginative powers on the
subject with good effect. Have you ever loved any one?"

Annette blushed and stammered, and said, "I hardly know, but I think I
have a fine idea of what love should be. I think the love of a woman for
the companion of her future life should go out to him just as naturally
as the waves leap to the strand, or the fire ascends to the sun."

"And this," said Luzerne, taking her hand in his, "is the way I feel
towards you. Surely our souls have met at last. Annette," said he, in a
voice full of emotion, "is it not so? May I not look on your hand as a
precious possession, to hold till death us do part?"

"Why, Mr. Luzerne," said Annette, recovering from her surprise, "this is
so sudden, I hardly know what to say. I have enjoyed your companionship
and I confess have been pleased with your attentions, but I did not
dream that you had any intentions beyond the enjoyment of the hour."

"No, Annette, I never seek amusement in toying with human hearts. I
should deem myself a villain if I came into your house and stole your
purse, and I should think myself no better if I entered the citadel of a
woman's heart to steal her affections only to waste their wealth. Her
stolen money I might restore, but what reparation could I make for
wasted love and blighted affections? Annette, let there be truth between
us. I will give you time to think on my proposal, hoping at the same
time that I shall find favor in your eyes."

After Mr. Luzerne left, Annette, sat alone by the fireside, a delicious
sense of happiness filling her soul with sudden joy. Could it be that
this handsome and dignified man had honored her above all the girls in
A.P., by laying his heart at her feet, or was it only a dream from
which would come a rude awakening? Annette looked in the glass, but no
stretch of imagination could make her conceive that she was beautiful in
either form or feature. She turned from the glass with a faint sigh,
wishing for his sake that she was as beautiful as some of the other
girls in A.P., whom he had overlooked, not thinking for one moment that
in loving her for what she was in intellect and character he had paid
her a far greater compliment than if she had been magnificently
beautiful and he had only been attracted by an exquisite form and lovely
face. In a few days after Mr. Luzerne's proposal to Annette he came for
the answer, to which he looked with hope and suspense.

"I am glad," he said, "to find you at home."

"Yes; all the rest of the family are out."

"Then the coast is clear for me?" There was tenderness and decision in
his voice as he said, "Now, Annette, I have come for the answer which
cannot fail to influence all my future life." He clasped the little hand
which lay limp and passive in his own. His dark, handsome eyes were bent
eagerly upon her as if scanning every nook and corner of her soul. Her
eye fell beneath his gaze, her hand trembled in his, tears of joy were
springing to her eyes, but she restrained them. She withdrew her hand
from his clasp; he looked pained and disappointed. "Have I been too
hasty and presumptuous?"

Annette said no rather faintly, while her face was an enigma he did not
know how to solve.

"Why did you release your hand and avert your eyes?"

"I felt that my will was succumbing to yours, and I want to give you an
answer untrammeled and uncontrolled by your will."

Mr. Luzerne smiled, and thought what rare thoughtfulness and judgment
she has evinced. How few women older than herself would have thought as
quickly and as clearly, and yet she is no less womanly, although she
seems so wise.

"What say you, my dear Annette, since I have released your hand. May I
not hope to hold this hand as the most precious of all my earthly
possessions until death us do part?"

Annette fixed her eyes upon the floor as if she were scanning the
figures on the carpet. Her heart beat quickly as she timidly repeated
the words, "Until death us do part," and placed her hand again in his,
while an expression of love and tender trust lit up the mobile and
expressive face, and Annette felt that his love was hers; the most
precious thing on earth that she could call her own. The engagement
being completed, the next event in the drama was preparation for the
wedding. It was intended that the engagement should not be long.
Together they visited different stores in purchasing supplies for their
new home. How pleasant was that word to the girl, who had spent such
lonely hours in the home of her uncle. To her it meant one of the
brightest spots on earth and one of the fairest types of heaven. In the
evening they often took pleasant strolls together or sat and chatted in
a beautiful park near their future home. One evening as they sat quietly
enjoying themselves Annette said, "How happened it that you preferred me
to all the other girls in A. P.? There are lots of girls more stylish
and better looking; what did you see in poor, plain me?" He laughingly
replied:

  "I chose you out from all the rest,
  The reason was I loved you best."

"And why did you prefer me?" She answered quite archly:

  "The rose is red, the violet's blue,
  Sugar is sweet and so are you."

"I chose you because of your worth. When I was young, I married for
beauty and I pierced my heart through with many sorrows."

"You been married?" said Annette with a tremor in her tones. "Why, I
never heard of it before."

"Did not Mr. Thomas or Mrs. Lasette tell you of it? They knew it, but it
is one of the saddest passages of my life, to which I scarcely ever
refer. She, my wife, drifted from me, and was drowned in a freshet near
Orleans."

"Oh, how dreadful, and I never knew it."

"Does it pain you?"

"No, but it astonishes me."

"Well, Annette, it is not a pleasant subject, let us talk of something
else. I have not spoken of it to you before, but to-day, when it pressed
so painfully upon my mind, it was a relief to me to tell you about it,
but now darling dismiss it from your mind and let the dead past bury its
dead."

Just then there came along where they were sitting a woman whose face
bore traces of great beauty, but dimmed and impaired by lines of sorrow
and disappointment. Just as she reached the seat where they were
sitting, she threw up her hands in sudden anguish, gasped out,
"Clarence! my long lost Clarence," and fell at his feet in a dead faint.

As Mr. Luzerne looked on the wretched woman lying at his feet, his face
grew deathly pale. He trembled like an aspen and murmured in a
bewildered tone, "has the grave restored its dead?"

But with Annette there was no time for delay. She chaffed, the rigid
hands, unloosed the closely fitting dress, sent for a cab and had her
conveyed as quickly as possible to the home for the homeless. Then
turning to Luzerne, she said bitterly, "Mr. Luzerne, will you explain
your encounter with that unfortunate woman?" She spoke as calmly as she
could, for a fierce and bitter anguish was biting at her heartstrings.
"What claim has that woman on you?"

"She has the claim of being my wife and until this hour I firmly
believed she was in her grave." Annette lifted her eyes sadly to his;
he calmly met her gaze, but there was no deception in his glance; his
eyes were clear and sad and she was more puzzled than ever.

"Annette," said he, "I have only one favor to ask; let this scene be a
secret between us as deep as the sea. Time will explain all. Do not
judge me too harshly."

"Clarence," she said, "I have faith in you, but I do not understand you;
but here is the carriage, my work at present is with this poor,
unfortunate woman, whose place I was about to unconsciously supplant."




Chapter XIX


And thus they parted. All their air castles and beautiful chambers of
imagery, blown to the ground by one sad cyclone of fate. In the city of
A.P., a resting place was found for the stranger who had suddenly dashed
from their lips the scarcely tasted cup of happiness. Mr. Luzerne
employed for her the best medical skill he could obtain. She was
suffering from nervous prostration and brain fever. Annette was constant
in her attentions to the sufferer, and day after day listened to her
delirious ravings. Sometimes she would speak of a diamond necklace, and
say so beseechingly, "Clarence, don't look at me so. You surely can't
think that I am guilty. I will go away and hide myself from you.
Clarence, you never loved me or you would not believe me guilty."

But at length a good constitution and careful nursing overmastered
disease, and she showed signs of recovery. Annette watched over her when
her wild ravings sounded in her ears like requiems for the loved and
cherished dead. Between her and the happiness she had so fondly
anticipated, stood that one blighted life, but she watched that life
just as carefully as if it had been the dearest life on earth she knew.

One day, as Annette sat by her bedside, she surmised from the look on
her face that the wandering reason of the sufferer had returned.
Beckoning to Annette she said "Who are you and where am I?"

Annette answered, "I am your friend and you are with friends."

"Poor Clarence," she murmured to herself; "more sinned against than
sinning."

"My dear friend," Annette said very tenderly, "you have been very ill,
and I am afraid that if you do not be very quiet you will be very sick
again." Annette gently smoothed her beautiful hair and tried to soothe
her into quietness. Rest and careful nursing soon wrought a wondrous
change in Marie Luzerne, but Annette thoughtfully refrained from all
reference to her past history and waited for time to unravel the mystery
she could not understand, and with this unsolved mystery the match
between her and Luzerne was broken off. At length, one day when Marie's
health was nearly restored, she asked for writing materials, and said,
"I mean to advertise for my mother in a Southern paper. It seems like a
horrid dream that all I knew or loved, even my husband, whom I deserted,
believed that I was dead, till I came suddenly on him in the park with a
young lady by his side. She looked like you. Was it you?"

"Yes," said Annette, as a sigh of relief came to her lips. If Clarence
had wooed and won her he had not willfully deceived her. "Oh, how I
would like to see him. I was wayward and young when I left him in anger.
Oh, if I have sinned I have suffered; but I think that I could die
content if I could only see him once more." Annette related the strange
sad story to her physician, who decided that it was safe and desirable
that there should be an interview between them. Luzerne visited his long
lost wife and after a private interview, he called Annette to the room,
who listened sadly while she told her story, which exonerated Luzerne
from all intent to deceive Annette by a false marriage while she had a
legal claim upon him.

"I was born," she said, "in New Orleans. My father was a Spaniard and
my mother a French Creole. She was very beautiful and my father met her
at a French ball and wished her for his companion for life, but as she
was an intelligent girl and a devout Catholic she would not consent to
live a life by which she would be denied the Sacrament of her Church; so
while she could not contract a civil marriage, which would give her the
legal claims of a wife, she could enter into an ecclesiastical marriage
by which she would not forfeit her claim to the rights and privileges of
the Church as a good Catholic. I was her only child, loved and petted by
my father, and almost worshipped by my mother, and I never knew what it
was to have a wish unfilled if it was in her power to gratify it. When I
was about 16 I met Clarence Luzerne. People then said that I was very
beautiful. You would scarcely think so now, but I suppose he thought so,
too. In a short time we were married, and soon saw that we were utterly
unfitted to each other; he was grave and I was gay; he was careful and
industrious, I was careless and extravagant; he loved the quiet of his
home and books; I loved the excitements of pleasure and the ball room,
and yet I think he loved me, but it was as a father might love a wayward
child whom he vainly tried to restrain. I had a cousin who had been
absent from New Orleans a number of years, of whose antecedents I knew
not scarcely anything. He was lively, handsome and dashing. My husband
did not like his society, and objected to my associating with him. I did
not care particularly for him, but I chafed against the restraint, and
in sheer waywardness I continued the association. One day he brought me
a beautiful diamond necklace which he said he had obtained in a distant
land. I laid it aside intending to show it to my husband; in the
meantime, a number of burglaries had been committed in the city of B.,
and among them was a diamond necklace. My heart stood still with sudden
fear while I read of the account and while I was resolving what to do,
my husband entered the house followed by two officers, who demanded the
necklace. My husband interfered and with a large sum of money obtained
my freedom from arrest. My husband was very proud of the honor of his
family and blamed me for staining its record. From that day my husband
seemed changed in his feelings towards me. He grew cold, distant and
abstracted, and I felt that my presence was distasteful to him. I could
not enter into his life and I saw that he had no sympathy with mine, and
so in a fit of desperation I packed my trunk and took with me some money
I had inherited from my father and left, as I said in a note, forever. I
entered a convent and resolved that I would devote myself to the service
of the poor and needy, for life had lost its charms for me. I had
scarcely entered the convent before the yellow fever broke out and raged
with fearful intensity. I was reckless of my life and engaged myself as
a nurse. One day there came to our hospital a beautiful girl with a
wealth of raven hair just like mine was before I became a nurse. I
nursed her through a tedious illness and when she went out from the
hospital, as I had an abundance of clothing, I supplied her from my
wardrobe with all she needed, even to the dress she wore away. The
clothing was all marked with my name. Soon after I saw in the paper that
a young woman who was supposed from the marks on her clothing and the
general description of her person to be myself was found drowned in a
freshet. I was taken ill immediately afterwards and learned on
recovering that I had been sick and delirious for several weeks. I
sought for my mother, inquired about my husband, but lost all trace of
them both till I suddenly came across my husband in Brightside Park. But
Clarence, if you have formed other ties don't let me come between you
and the sunshine. You are free to apply for a divorce; you can make the
plea of willful desertion. I will not raise the least straw in your way.
I will go back to the convent and spend the rest of my life in penitence
and prayer. I have sinned; it is right that I should suffer." Clarence
looked eagerly into the face of Annette; it was calm and peaceful, but
in it he read no hope of a future reunion.

"What say you, Annette, would you blame me if I accepted this release?"

"I certainly would. She is your lawful wife. In the church of her father
you pledged your faith to her, and I do not think any human law can
absolve you from being faithful to your marriage vows. I do not say it
lightly. I do not think any mother ever laid her first born in the grave
with any more sorrow than I do to-day when I make my heart the sepulchre
in which I bury my first and only love. This, Clarence, is the saddest
trial of my life. I am sadder to-day than when I stood a lonely orphan
over my grandmother's grave, and heard the clods fall on her coffin and
stood lonely and heart-stricken in my uncle's house, and felt that I was
unwelcome there. But, Clarence, the great end of life is not the
attainment of happiness but the performance of duty and the development
of character. The great question is not what is pleasant but what is
right."

"Annette, I feel that you are right; but I am too wretched to realize
the force of what you say. I only know that we must part, and that means
binding my heart as a bleeding sacrifice on the altar of duty."

"Do you not know who drank the cup of human suffering to its bitter
dregs before you? Arm yourself with the same mind, learn to suffer and
be strong. Yes, we must part; but if we are faithful till death heaven
will bring us sweeter rest." And thus they parted. If Luzerne had felt
any faltering in his allegiance to duty he was too honorable and upright
when that duty was plainly shown to him to weakly shrink from its
performance, and as soon as his wife was able to travel he left A.P.,
for a home in the sunny South. After Luzerne had gone Annette thought,
"I must have some active work which will engross my mind and use every
faculty of my soul. I will consult with my dear friend Mrs. Lasette."

All unnerved by her great trial, Annette rang Mrs. Lasette's front door
bell somewhat hesitatingly and walked wearily into the sitting-room,
where she found Mrs. Lasette resting in the interval between twilight
and dark. "Why Annette!" she said with pleased surprise, "I am so glad
to see you. How is Clarence? I thought you would have been married
before now. I have your wedding present all ready for you."

"Mrs. Lasette," Annette said, while her voice trembled with
inexpressible sorrow, "it is all over."

Mrs. Lasette was lighting the lamp and had not seen Annette's face in
the dusk of the evening, but she turned suddenly around at the sound of
her voice and noticed the wan face so pitiful in its expression of
intense suffering.

"What is the matter, my dear; have you and Luzerne had a lover's
quarrel?"

"No," said Annette, sadly, and then in the ears of her sympathizing
friend she poured her tale of bitter disappointment. Mrs. Lasette folded
the stricken girl to her heart in tenderest manner.

"Oh, Mrs. Lasette," she said, "you make me feel how good it is for girls
to have a mother."

"Annette, my brave, my noble girl, I am so glad."

"Glad of what, Mrs. Lasette?"

"Glad that you have been so true to conscience and to duty; glad that
you have come through your trial like gold tried in the fiercest fire;
glad that my interest in you has not been in vain, and that I have been
able to see the blessed fruitage of my love and labors. And now, my dear
child, what next?"

"I must have a change; I must find relief in action. I feel so weak and
bruised in heart."

"A bruised reed will not break," murmured Mrs. Lasette to herself.

"Annette," said Mrs. Lasette, "this has been a fearful trial, but it
must not be in vain; let it bring you more than happiness; let it bring
you peace and blessedness. There is only one place for us to bring our
sins and our sorrows, and that is the mercy seat. Let us both kneel
there to-night and ask for grace to help in this your time of need. We
are taught to cast our care upon Him for he careth for us. Come, my
child, with the spirit of submission and full surrender, and consecrate
your life to his service, body, soul and spirit, not as a dead offering,
but a living sacrifice."

Together they mingled their prayers and tears, and when Annette rose
from her knees there was a look of calmness on her face, and a deep
peace had entered her soul. The strange trial was destined to bring joy
and gladness and yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness in the
future. Mrs. Lasette wrote to some friends in a distant Southern town
where she obtained a situation for Annette as a teacher. Here she soon
found work to enlist her interest and sympathy and bring out all the
activity of her soul. She had found her work and the people among whom
she labored had found their faithful friend.




Chapter XX


Luzerne's failure to marry Annette and re-instatement of his wife was
the sensation of the season. Some pitied Annette; others blamed Luzerne,
but Annette found, as a teacher, opportunity among the freedmen to be a
friend and sister to those whose advantages had been less than hers.
Life had once opened before her like a fair vision enchanted with
delight, but her beautiful dream had faded like sun rays mingling with
the shadows of night. It was the great disappointment of her life, but
she roused up her soul to bear suffering and to be true to duty, and
into her soul came a joy which was her strength. Little children learned
to love her, the street gamins knew her as their friend, aged women
blessed the dear child as they called her, who planned for their comfort
when the blasts of winter were raging around their homes. Before her
great trial she had found her enjoyment more in her intellectual than
spiritual life, but when every earthly prop was torn away, she learned
to lean her fainting head on Christ the corner-stone and the language of
her heart was "Nearer to thee, e'en though it be a cross that raiseth
me." In surrendering her life she found a new life and more abundant
life in every power and faculty of her soul.

Luzerne went South and found Marie's mother who had mourned her child as
dead. Tenderly they watched over her, but the seeds of death were sown
too deeply in her wasted frame for recovery, and she wasted away and
sank into a premature grave, leaving Luzerne the peaceful satisfaction
of having smoothed her passage to the grave, and lengthened with his
care, her declining days. Turning from her grave he plunged into active
life. It was during the days of reconstruction when tricksters and
demagogues were taking advantage of the ignorance and inexperience of
the newly enfranchised citizens. Honorable and upright, Luzerne
preserved his integrity among the corruptions of political life. Men
respected him too much to attempt to swerve him from duty for personal
advantage. No bribes ever polluted his hands, nor fraud, nor political
chicanery ever stained his record.

He was the friend and benefactor of his race, giving them what gold is
ever too poor to buy--the benefit of a good example and a noble life,
and earned for himself the sobriquet by which he was called, "honest
Luzerne." And yet at times he would turn wistfully to Annette and the
memory of those glad, bright days when he expected to clasp hands with
her for life. At length his yearning had become insatiable and he
returned to A. P.

Laura Lasette had married Charley Cooper who by patience and industry
had obtained a good position in the store of a merchant who was manly
enough to let it be known that he had Negro blood in his veins, but that
he intended to give him a desk and place in his establishment and he
told his employees that he intended to employ him, and if they were not
willing to work with him they could leave. Charley was promoted just the
same as others according to his merits. Time had dealt kindly with Mrs.
Lasette, as he scattered his silvery crystals amid her hair, and of her
it might be said,

  Each silver hair, each wrinkle there
    Records some good deed done,
  Some flower she scattered by the way
    Some spark from love's bright sun.

Mrs. Larkins had grown kinder and more considerate as the years passed
by. Mr. Thomas had been happily married for several years. Annette was
still in her Southern home doing what she could to teach, help and
befriend those on whose chains the rust of ages had gathered. Mr.
Luzerne found out Annette's location and started Southward with a fresh
hope springing up in his heart.

It was a balmy day in the early spring when he reached the city where
Annette was teaching. Her home was a beautiful place of fragrance and
flowers. Groups of young people were gathered around their teacher
listening eagerly to a beautiful story she was telling them. Elderly
women were scattered in little companies listening to or relating some
story of Annette's kindness to them and their children.

"I told her," said one, "that I had a vision that some one who was fair,
was coming to help us. She smiled and said she was not fair. I told her
she was fair to me."

"I wish she had been here fifteen years ago," said another one. "Before
she came my boy was just as wild as a colt, but now he is jist as stiddy
as a judge."

"I just think," said another one, "that she has been the making of my
Lucy. She's just wrapped up in Miss Annette, thinks the sun rises and
sets in her." Old mothers whose wants had been relieved, came with the
children and younger men too, to celebrate Annette's 31st birthday.
Happy and smiling, like one who had passed through suffering into peace
she stood, the beloved friend of old and young, when suddenly she heard
a footstep on the veranda which sent the blood bounding in swift
currents back to her heart and left her cheek very pale. It was years
since she had heard the welcome rebound of that step, but it seemed as
familiar to her as the voice of a loved and long lost friend, or a
precious household word, and before her stood, with slightly bowed form
and hair tinged with gray, Luzerne. Purified through suffering, which to
him had been an evangel of good, he had come to claim the love of his
spirit. He had come not to separate her from her cherished life work,
but to help her in uplifting and helping those among whom her lot was
cast as a holy benediction, and so after years of trial and pain, their
souls had met at last, strengthened by duty, purified by that faith
which works by love, and fitted for life's highest and holiest truths.

And now, in conclusion, permit me to say under the guise of fiction, I
have essayed to weave a story which I hope will subserve a deeper
purpose than the mere amusement of the hour, that it will quicken and
invigorate human hearts and not fail to impart a lesson of usefulness
and value.



Notes


1. In the original, this sentence reads: "After she became a wife and
mother, instead of becoming entirely absorbed in a round of household
cares and duties, and she often said, that the moment the crown of
motherhood fell upon her how that she had poured a new interest in the
welfare of her race."

2. The original reads "But Mr. Thompson."

3. The original reads "but during her short sojourn in the South."

4. In the original this sentence reads: "Young men anxious for places in
the gift of government found that by winking at Frank Miller's vices and
conforming to the demoralizing customs of his place, were the passports
to political favors, and lacking moral stamina, hushed their consciences
and became partakers of his sins."

5. The original reads "Mrs. Larking."

6. The original reads "said Mrs. Larkins, seating herself beside Mrs.
Larking."

7. The original reads "continued Mr. Slocum."

8. The original reads "'Isn't your name Benny?'"

9. The original reads "said Charley Hastings."

10. The original reads "scarcely on intellect."

11. The original reads "expensive views."

12. The original reads "Mrs. Harcourt."

13. The original reads "Mrs. Hanson."

14. The original reads "Mr. Thomas."

15. The original reads "Tom Hanson."





End of Project Gutenberg's Trial and Triumph, by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper