accustomed daily routine found it necessary, among other things, to call
by telephone the downtown brokerage firm of Hopegood & Co. One day he
missed the familiar feminine voice which had usually responded to his
calls. But the new voice seemed sweeter and much more passionately
penetrating. For two or three days Brickermann was puzzled, not only
because of the change at the other end of the ’phone, but also because
of the strange and unaccountable fascination which the new voice
possessed for him. At length one day, almost in desperation, he turned
aside from his regular business inquiries to ask:
“Where’s the other girl?”
“Which other girl?” asked the mellifluous voice over the articulate
wire.
“The one who used to answer the ’phone for the Hopegoods,” explained
Brickermann.
“Promoted,” came the response, with a merry little laugh.
“And you have her old place?” asked Brickermann, somewhat encouraged.
“Yes; for awhile,” said the same still, small voice at the other end,
and it sounded more and more sweetly to the would-be masher.
“Well,” said Brickermann, laughing the while, “I used to know her quite
well, and I should like to meet you face to face, if you don’t mind. I
am so charmed with the music of your voice I am sure I should be
perfectly entranced with the magic of your face.”
[Illustration: “IS—ER—ER—MR. HOPEGOOD IN?”]
A merry peal of laughter from the other end greeted this sally. The
young man continued:
“I used to come down some days about four o’clock to see Margie. Will
you, my Unseen Charmer, grant me the same high favor?”
“Why, certainly! Come any day,” answered the sweet voice which had so
strangely bewitched the young man. In ecstasy Brickermann shouted back:
“I’ll be down this afternoon.”
Brickermann hung up the receiver, and, chuckling with delight, he turned
to his other duties with the alacrity that a young spring chicken
displays when it suddenly discovers a big fat worm.
By three-thirty o’clock he had arranged his toilet, and stood before the
mirror giving the finishing twirl to his budding moustache. He brushed
his clothing the second time, brushed his hat, and, figuratively
speaking, arrayed in purple and fine linen, he sallied forth. He boarded
an elevated train bound for the downtown district. On his way down he
tried to picture to himself the kind of a girl he should meet at the
Hopegoods. Would she be tall or short of stature? Blonde or brunette?
Above twenty-one years of age or only sweet sixteen? The quick arrival
of the train at Park Place put a period to Brickermann’s reverie. He
went tripping across a few blocks to the place where all of his hopes
had been centered during the past few hours—in fact, days. Arrived
there, he stepped into the front office where “Margie” had formerly
presided. It was the same snug and cosy room, but he failed to behold
there the eagerly expected young lady. Instead he ran amuck a chubby
little boy, with a ruddy face and curly hair, and perhaps not more than
fourteen or fifteen years old, sitting in “Margie’s” place.
Brickermann was visibly embarrassed. He did not know where to begin or
what to say. He twitched nervously at the glove which he carried in his
hand, and finally he stammered:
“Is—er—Mr. Hopegood in?”
“No, sir,” said the boy. “Can I be of any service to you?”
Brickermann’s face turned blood red, and great drops of perspiration
stood out upon his forehead. The accents of the little boy startled him,
for they were the same that had been wafted to him almost daily along
the wire and with which he thought he had been enamored. In the midst of
his confusion he managed to say, hoping almost against hope that his
identity had not been discovered:
“Well, er—er—I’ll call again.”
And, without waiting to hear the Unseen Charmer speak again, he hastily
retired with as good grace as was possible under the circumstances.
XCIII.
OUR COUNTRY.
Boys and girls, we are all American citizens, the last one of us. This
is our country, as much as it is the country of any other race, and we
should love it and fight for it as our fathers have loved, fought and
died for it on many a battlefield. We may be the descendants of
Africans, but we are citizens of the United States. This is our home—our
country. Let us believe it, in spite of what some foolish people say.
Therefore I am going to give you one or two sentiments which you should
learn early in life in order to stimulate your patriotism.
1. May the honor of our country be without stain.
2. May the glory of America never cease to shine.
3. May every American manfully withstand corruption.
4. May reverence for the laws ever predominate in the hearts of the
American people.
5. The sons and daughters of America, may their union be cemented by
love and affection, and their offspring adorn the stations they are
destined to fill.
6. May the growth of the American union never be prevented by party
spirit.
7. The boys of America, may they be strong and virtuous, manly and
brave.
8. The girls of America, may they prove to be such in heart and life as
will make them worthy mothers of a strong and noble race.
9. Health to our president, prosperity to our people, and may Congress
direct its endeavors to the public good.
10.—
May Peace o ’er America spread her wing,
And Commerce fill her ports with gold;
May Arts and Science comfort bring,
And Liberty her sons enfold.
XCIV.
THE “DON’T-CARE” GIRL.
About the worst girl in all this world is the girl who doesn’t care what
people think or say about her conduct; the girl who goes to every “hop,”
to every party, who stays out late at night with the boys, who hangs
over the gate and talks to them, and who cuts a number of foolish
capers, and then when any one speaks to her, shoots her head ’way up in
the air, and turns up her nose, if she can, and says boldly: “Oh, I
don’t care; nobody has anything to do with me!” She is the worst girl in
the world, and she will never come to any good end. Every girl who is a
law unto herself in regard to all that she says or does is certain not
only to bring upon herself the condemnation of those whose good opinion
it is worth while to have, but she will most certainly incur the
punishment of a just God. And sometimes, I am sorry to say, I think that
when a girl proudly declares that she doesn’t care for the good opinion
of others she does so because she knows that she has already lost all
right to that good opinion.
[Illustration: THE “DON’T-CARE” GIRL.]
It is wrong, boys and girls, to undertake to run roughshod over the
so-called prejudices of the public. It is a foolish thing to take
delight in trying to shock people by your boisterous and unladylike and
unbecoming conduct. Every really wise and nice girl does care a good
deal for the good opinion of others, and particularly for the good
opinion of persons older than she is. She recognizes the fact that the
laws of conventionality and of good society are based upon what is right
and what is proper, and that no girl can with propriety set them at
naught.
Some girls go so far as to say that they “don’t care” what their own
fathers and mothers think. The wild girl who says this is setting at
defiance not only the human parental law, but also the law of God, which
plainly commands children to obey their parents.
Haven’t you ever seen a “don’t-care” girl? She is nearly always reckless
in manner and speech; she is bold and defiant; she is impudent beyond
mention; and she is very fond of ridiculing girls who do care a great
deal what others think about them.
No matter whose children they are—no matter what schools they have
attended—these “don’t care” girls are no good, and good girls ought not
to associate with them. Every day such flippant girls are treading on
dangerous ground, and some day, unless a merciful God prevents it, she
will come to open disgrace and die and go to torment. I am hoping to see
the day when all the “don’t-care” girls will have passed out of
existence, and then all our girls will be of the refined and womanly
kind who do care a great deal about their conduct, their manners and
their morals. I don’t want my daughter to associate with any other kind.
XCV.
NEGRO HEROES.
No true history of the American continent can be written without giving
due credit to the part which brave negro men have played on the field of
battle in the defense of liberty. At the head of the list of great negro
soldiers stands unquestionably Toussaint L’Ouverture, the emancipator of
Hayti, the little republic to the south of the Island of Cuba. This
black hero, who never saw a soldier until he was fifty years old,
crossed swords with the great Napoleon, who is said to be the greatest
general the world has ever known, and he outwitted that great warrior.
Wendell Phillips in a great oration places the name of Toussaint at the
head of the list of all the world’s great leaders and statesmen, above
the name of even our own George Washington.
Next comes Crispus Attucks, who was killed in the Boston massacre on the
night of March 5, 1770. His blood was the first blood shed in the cause
of American independence. John Adams and Daniel Webster both date the
beginning of American independence from that terrible massacre. Later on
when the Revolutionary War came the negro played a valiant part and many
individuals won just fame. For instance, Peter Salem and Salem Poor both
distinguished themselves at the battle of Bunker Hill, and at other
points. To-day a monument stands on Boston Common erected in honor of
Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem, Salem Poor, Samuel Maverick and James
Caldwell.
[Illustration: NEGRO HEROES.]
All the boys and girls now living know about the heroism of Antonio
Maceo in behalf of the freedom of Cuba, and how that brave general laid
down his life for his own people shortly before the United States in
1898 took up arms in defense of Cuban liberty and drove the Spanish
tyrants out. Of course there were many colored soldiers who took notable
parts in the work done by our country during that short and decisive
war. It is even claimed on good authority that the black soldiers saved
the regiment of Rough Riders, which was commanded by the intrepid
Colonel Roosevelt who afterwards became governor of New York and
president of the United States.
But before the Spanish-American War the negroes had given good account
of themselves on many a well-fought field—in the war of 1812 and again
in the great Civil War. In the Civil War, which resulted in the
restoration of the Union and the freedom of the slaves, there were
186,000 colored soldiers. To-day a monument stands on Boston Common,
also, in memory of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment of United
States soldiers. This was a colored regiment, which was commanded by a
gallant white man named Robert Gould Shaw. He and a large proportion of
his command were killed at Fort Wagner, S. C., in July, 1863.
In the Civil War we were not allowed to have our own officers, all the
officers being white. In the Spanish-American War this was changed, and
we had over two hundred officers, including some as high as colonels and
two paymasters with the rank of majors. When another war comes we are
going to have some generals as well as colonels and captains and majors.
Some of the little boys who are reading these words may be called on to
render this higher service for the country and the race. I hope, boys,
if it should be so, that you will be prepared to give as good an account
of your stewardship as those who have gone before. I hope you will learn
a good deal about the lives of the great heroes above named, and about
others whom I cannot stop to mention now. In this way you will gain
inspiration for the future.
XCVI.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO YOUNG PEOPLE.
Shortly before he died Frederick Douglass made a tour through the South.
Among other places he visited Atlanta University. At that place he made
an address to the young people. It is so full of hope and help that I
wanted to place it where every ambitious black boy and girl in America
can see it. It has never been published before, except in the Bulletin
of Atlanta University. Mr. Douglass said:
[Illustration: FREDERICK DOUGLASS.]
“My young friends: I see before me an assemblage of young people, full
of the blood of youth, just entering upon the voyage of life. It is an
interesting spectacle to me, as to us all, to meet such an assembly as I
see before me this morning in an institution of learning, of knowledge,
and of ethics and of Christian graces. I experience great pleasure in
what I see to-day. There is no language to describe my feelings. It was
no mere image that John saw and described in the apocalypse. It was a
new heaven and a new earth indeed. When I look back upon the time when I
was a fugitive slave I recollect the evils and cruelty of slave-hunting.
No mountain was so high, no valley was so deep, no glen so secluded, no
place so sacred to liberty that I could put my foot upon it and say I
was free! But now I am free! Contrasting my condition then and now the
change exceeds what John saw upon the isle of Patmos. A change vast and
wonderful, that came by the fulfilling of laws. We got freed by laws,
marvellous in our eyes. Men, brave men, good men, who had the courage of
their convictions, were arrested and subjected to persecutions, mobs,
lawlessness, violence. They had the conviction of truth. Simple truth
lasts forever!
“Be not discouraged. There is a future for you and a future for me. The
resistance encountered now predicates hope. The negro degraded,
indolent, lazy, indifferent to progress, is not objectionable to the
average public mind. Only as we rise in the scale of proficiency do we
encounter opposition. When we see a ship that lies rotting in the
harbor, its seams yawning, its sides broken in, taking water and
sinking, it meets with no opposition; but when its sails are spread to
the breeze, its top-sails and its royals flying, then there is
resistance. The resistance is in proportion to its speed. In Memphis
three negro men were lynched, not because they were low and degraded,
but because they knew their business and other men wanted their
business.
“I am delighted to see you all. Don’t be despondent. Don’t measure
yourselves from the white man’s standpoint; but measure yourselves by
the depths from which you have come. I measure from these depths, and I
see what Providence has done. Daniel Webster said in his speech at the
dedication of Bunker Hill monument: ‘Bunker Hill monument is completed.
There it stands, a memorial of the past, a monitor of the present, a
hope of the future. It looks, speaks, acts!’ So this assembly is a
monitor of the present, a memorial of the past, a hope of the future. I
see boys and girls around me. Boys, you will be men some day. Girls, you
will be women some day. May you become good men and women, intelligent
men and women, a credit to yourselves and your country.
“I thank you for what I have experienced to-day and I leave you
reluctantly, and shall always carry with me the pleasantest impressions
of this occasion.”
XCVII.
TOO HIGH A DAM.
Once upon a time a criminal, sentenced to a twenty-year term of
punishment, declared that his ruin was due to the fact that too high a
“dam” had been built around his early life.
He was a boy on a farm, the son of strict parents, who never unbent into
friends and comrades, but had iron ideas of parental duty along the
lines of restraints, and gave large doses of the catechism and the Ten
Commandments, interspersed with much fault-finding and complaints of the
waywardness of boys in general and their own boy in particular.
As a consequence the boy chafed against the “high dam,” burst its bounds
early and came to the city with a zest for freedom in proportion to the
restraint he had undergone and an admiration for a fast life. This was
by way of reaction from his disgust for the farm and its slow ways.
“Don’t build your dams too high,” was the brief sermon preached by this
condemned criminal and directed to parents—especially those who are
rearing children in the country or in small towns. Human nature will
continue to be human nature, and boys will continue to be boys. Youth
will long, and naturally so, for variety and amusement. The house in
which parents never unbend in sympathy with their children’s longing for
a little brightness and jollity, where work goes on in unretrieved
monotony, and home means only a place to sleep and eat in—such a home
sends its boys and girls to the city before they are panoplied to meet
its temptations; either this, or else it hardens and saddens them into
mere machines or beasts of burden.
Books, music, flowers, games, social clubs, cheerful pictures, love and
sympathy—these will bind the young heart to home and right living and
will obviate the necessity of the “high dams” of restraint.
XCVIII.
A GOOD FELLOW.
He was a good fellow.
He spent his money like a Prince.
There was nothing too good for him to do for those with whom he kept
company.
He lived rapidly, and had no thought of to-morrow. He burned the candle
of life at both ends.
To-day he is dead,—and those vampires who sucked his life’s blood and
helped him to spend his money have no time to give him one thought.
Ah, how insincere and empty is the title of “good fellow” when it is
applied to the man whose money is always on tap for those who are
desirous of having a good time! And how corrupt and undesirable are the
so-called friendships which spring from a lavish expenditure of money!
Boys, the roof over your heads covers the best friends you could
possibly have on earth. Those who slap you on the shoulder and say
hilariously, “Good boy!” are seldom ever worth their salt. They like you
for what they can get out of you—that’s all!
Real happiness in this world comes, if at all, from living right and
doing right. If you are a good fellow in the sense of giving everybody a
“good time” with your hard-earned means, I warn you that, when your
money gives out, all your friends will desert you, and when you die they
will be the last ones to come near you, and may even laugh at what a
fool you made of yourself!
XCIX.
THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO.
My dear boys and girls, I have written nearly one hundred stories for
this book and I have not said one word about the so-called Race Problem.
I have done this on purpose. I believe that the less you think about the
troubles of the race and the less you talk about them and the more time
you spend in hard and honest work, believing in God and trusting him for
the future, the better it will be for all concerned. I know, of course,
that the sufferings which are inflicted upon the colored people in this
country are many and grievous. I know that we are discriminated against
in many ways—on common carriers, in public resorts and even in private
life. The right to vote is being taken away from us in nearly all the
Southern states. Lynchings are on the increase. Not only our men but our
women also are being burned at the stake. What shall we do? There are
those who say that we must strike back—use fire and torch and sword and
shotgun ourselves. But I tell you plainly that we cannot afford to do
that. The white people have all the courts, all the railroads, all the
newspapers, all the telegraph wires, all the arms and ammunition and
double the men that we have. In every race riot the negro would get the
worst of it finally. But there is a higher reason than that. We cannot
afford to do wrong. We cannot afford to lose our decency, our
self-respect, our character. No man will ever be the superior of the man
he robs; no man will ever be the superior of the man he steals from. I
would rather be a victim than a victimizer. I would rather be wronged
than to do wrong. And no race is superior to the race it tramples upon,
robs, maltreats and murders. In spite of prejudice; in spite of
proscription; in spite of nameless insults and injuries, we cannot as a
race, afford to do wrong. But we can afford to be patient. God is not
dead. His chariots are not unwheeled. It is ordained of God that races,
as well as individuals, shall rise through tribulations. And during this
period of stress and strain through which we are passing in this country
I believe that there are unseen forces marshalled in the defense of our
long-suffering and much-oppressed people. “They that be with us are more
than they that be with them.” What should we care, then, though all the
lowlands be filled with threats, if the mountains of our hope and
courage and patience are filled with horses and chariots of Divine
rescue?
C
THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN.
My last words shall be to parents. Many parents neglect the training of
their children until the boys and girls have grown to be almost men and
women, and then they expect all at once to develop them into
well-rounded characters, as if by magic. Others fix upon a definite time
in life—say, ten or twelve years old—before which time they say it is
unnecessary to seek to make lasting impressions upon the minds of
children, all unconscious of the fact that the character may have been
long before that period biased for good or evil.
I say it deliberately—it is a deep and abiding conviction with me, that
the time to begin to shape the character of children is as soon as they
begin to know their own mothers from other mothers, or as soon as they
become awake to the events which are taking place around them. The
farmer who has the notion that his child can wait, does not dare to let
his corn and cotton wait. He has observed that there are noxious weeds
which spring up side by side with the seed he has planted, and,
marvelous to say, the weeds outgrow the plants. They must, therefore, be
cut down and kept down, or else they will ruin the crop.
Side by side with your tender babe in arms there are growing now, dear
mothers, the poisonous tares. They are rooted already in the child’s
heart, and, unless they are stricken down pretty soon, they will
dominate the child’s life. And, of course, there is only one way to
destroy evil—that is, to plant good in its stead. If there is one
untenanted chamber in your child’s heart, inhabit it, I pray you, with
nobler and purer thoughts which before long shall bring forth fruit unto
God. Satan does not wait, I assure you; he never allows a vacancy to
remain unoccupied in anybody’s heart, old or young. He rushes into empty
hearts and idle lives and sows tares thicker than the strewn leaves of
autumn. It is an old and senseless and barbarian custom which has taught
us that the child can wait or must wait. If anybody must wait at table
to be served, it is usually the little child, who may be the hungriest
of all; if some one must remain away from church or Sunday-school, it is
often the youngest child, who perhaps needs most to go; if some one must
be kept out of the day school, it is the smallest child, of course; and
during the year that he remains idle he may receive impressions and
learn lessons that will mar his whole future life. Let us have done with
this barbaric practice. Make room for the children; give them not only
the first place but the best place.
In almost any city in the South any Sunday in the year you will find
more children—more boys and girls—outside of the Sunday-schools than you
will find inside. There is a loud and crying call sounding from the past
and from the future and bidding mothers and fathers to be more diligent
in the matter of having their children embrace opportunities of growth
and spiritual culture which are almost within a stone’s throw. If
mothers and fathers will not hear and obey this clarion call I believe
that they will be brought to account for it in the day of judgment. Not
only so, but in the years to come they will be compelled to wail out
their sorrow over prodigal sons and daughters who might have proven to
be ornaments to society and to the church if their parents had devoted
half the care upon them that they expended upon colts and calves,
kittens and puppies that grew up with them!
In all earnestness I implore those to whom God has given winsome little
children to begin early, as early as thy find it possible, to train
their young lives for God and heaven. Let their little voices learn
early to lisp the precious name of Jesus and be attuned to sing His
praise. If you leave them this legacy—than which there is none
greater—there will come peace and joy to your old age, and the light of
heaven, like the golden glow of a radiant sunset, will rest on your
dying bed.