Senator Ruffin sent for the attendant who had left the committee-room as

soon as quiet was restored, and bought his silence with a five-dollar

bill. This honest man was true to his promise to keep his mouth shut,

but he overlooked informing the Senator that he had already given the

first of his co-labourers he met in the hall a fragmentary account of

the mix-up. He had given the names only of Senators Ruffin and Killam,

as he did not know the others, all of whom he thought were members of

the Lower House.

The reporters were on the trail in an hour. They interviewed the

Senators, but these were dumb. They found that the Senate attendant who

had his information second-hand was the only source of news supply. What

this fellow lacked in knowledge, however, he supplied out of his

imagination; and the details grew and multiplied as different reporters

interviewed him. At best there was much to be supplied by the young

gentlemen of the press, and the result was as many different stories as

there were men on the job. The nearest any of them got to the truth was

to say that two Congressmen had been discussing the negro question and

had come to blows because some woman's name had been dragged in, and

that one had broken the other's jaw. This much in the evening papers.

By the next morning the newspaper ferrets had located all the actors and

eye-witnesses and gave their names to the public. Fortunately the

attendant had not caught Smith's remark but only his rebuke by Senator

Ruffin. So that the public knew only that Evans Rutledge had unset or

broken the jaw of Congressman Smith because of some improper use of a

young lady's name. Whose, none of the gentlemen would say.

* * * * *

Evans Rutledge was in a fever of anxiety lest that name should get to

the public. He was sure that he could not face Elise again if it did.

Senator Ruffin's rebuke had sunk deep into his heart and he felt more

guilty than Smith. He looked over the morning and evening papers very

carefully to see whether they had discovered the young woman, before he

finally decided to go to Senator DeVale's as he had promised Lola. When

he arrived he found, beside Elise, only Alice Mackenzie, Hazard and

young MacLane, an under-secretary of the British embassy. Others who

were to come failed to appear.

Elise was not pleased with the situation. She was quite willing to be

ordinarily civil to Mr. Rutledge, but she knew that nothing could

separate MacLane and Alice Mackenzie, and that Hazard had known Lola so

long and had proposed to her so regularly and insistently that he was

for her or for nobody. It looked a little too much, therefore, as if she

had chosen Evans for her very own for the evening. She did not want him

to think such a thing possible. She remembered his point-blank

editorial utterance that those small sentiments--loves and hates--melted

away before exhibitions of social equality with negroes--so at least she

construed it--and she could not but resent it, though she would not

admit she troubled herself to do that.

"Now, young people," said Lola, "as the programme has been spoiled we

will make this an evening of do-as-you-please."

"Good, very good," commented Hazard. "In that case you will please to

come over here and take this chair and let's finish that conversation we

were having last night when the unpronounceable Russian took you away

from me."

"I am afraid that conversation is a serial story," she laughed, taking

the chair he placed for her.

MacLane asked Alice Mackenzie some vague question about a song, which

only she could interpret, and they by common impulse went through the

wide door to the piano in the back parlour, where after she had hummed a

short love ballad for him to piano accompaniment they dropped into a

pianissimo duet of love without accompaniment.

Elise, feeling that she was being thus thrown at Mr. Rutledge's head,

came to the mark with spirit and kept him guessing for an hour. She

resented his possible inference that she had chosen him for an evening's

_tete-a-tete_, and set about to show him that such was not the fact by a

display of perversity and brilliance which dazzled while it irritated

him. She would assume for a moment an intimately friendly, even

confiding, manner that like the breath of the honeysuckle at his Pacolet

plantation home would set his senses a-swim,--and in the next moment

chill his glowing heart with the iciest of conventional reserve or

answer his sincerest speeches with the light disdain and indifference of

a mocking spirit. At one time she would kindle his admiration for her

quickness of thought and keenness of repartee; and again appear so dull

and careless that he must needs explain his own essays at wit.

Her caprices, so plainly intentional yet inexplicable, exasperated him

almost to the point of open rebellion, and the more evident his

perturbation became, the more spirit she put into the game. She won him

back from a half-dozen fits of resentful impatience to the very edge of

intoxication,--only to bait him again more outrageously.

Lola DeVale, perfectly familiar with the theme of Oliver Hazard's

serial, found time even while admiring Hazard's ability to decorate his

story in ever-changing and ever pleasing colours, to note that Elise was

giving Rutledge a tempestuous hour.

"It's a shame for her to treat him so," she said to Hazard, interpreting

her meaning by a nod toward Elise and Evans.

"I hadn't noticed. What's she doing to him?"

"I believe he loves her, and she has been treating him shamefully all

evening."

"So that was it," murmured Hazard. "She certainly ought to be good to

him."

"Beg pardon, I didn't understand you," said Lola.

"I said she ought to be good to him."

"I heard that. But the other remark you made?"

Hazard caught himself, and looked at Lola steadily. "I was so bold as to

express an opinion--which had not been requested--and to aver

that--she--er--ought to be good to him," he repeated with an over-done

blankness of countenance.

"You come on," said Lola as she rose. "We are going to scare up

something for you people to eat," she remarked to the others.

"Now, sir," she said when she had gotten him into the dining-room, "I'll

see what sort of a reporter I could be. Stand right there, and look at

me. Now.--why did Mr. Rutledge knock Congressman Smith down? No, no,

stand perfectly still--and no evasion."

"What are you talking about?" asked Hazard.

"Don't be silly," the girl said impatiently. "I read something more

than the society and fashion columns in the newspapers. Tell me. Why

did he break Mr. Smith's jaw?--who was the young lady?--and what did Mr.

Smith say of her? I know it was Elise; but tell me about it--and hurry,

for those people are getting hungry."

"I must not tell that, Lola," Hazard answered her seriously.

"A man should have no secrets from his--proposed--wife."

"Make it _promised_ wife and I'll agree," Hazard replied eagerly, taking

her hand.

"No; we'll leave it _proposed_ awhile longer," she answered him archly.

"I've become so accustomed to it that way that I'd hate to change it."

The smile she gave him as she slowly drew away her hand would have

bribed any man to treason.

"But we will compromise it," Lola continued. "I will be real careful of

your honour. I'll ask you a question, and if the answer is _yes_ you

needn't answer it. Now--was it not an insult to Elise that Mr. Rutledge

resented?"

"Lola, when you said that word _wife_ a moment since you

were--heavenly."

"Hush your nonsense, Ollie.... I knew it was Elise when you said that

thing in the parlour.... Did Mr. Rutledge really break his jaw?"

"Oh, it was beautiful, beautiful," said Hazard with enthusiasm. "Such a

clean left-hander! Dropped him like a beef--he's big as two of

Rutledge--in a wink--before he could finish his sentence,--the low-bred

dog! Yes, beautifully done, beaut--"

"Here they come," said Lola. She was busily breaking out the stores

from the sideboard when Elise and Rutledge appeared.

"Here, Mr. Hazard, take this dish in to that mooning young couple in the

back parlour. And you, Mr. Rutledge, just force them to eat enough of

these pickles to keep their tempers in equilibrium."

* * * * *

"Oh, my dear," she exclaimed when the two men were gone, "I've

discovered the name of the young woman Mr. Rutledge fought for. Ollie

let it get away from him--not the name, but I figured it out. And for

whom do you suppose it was?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," answered Elise in all truthfulness.

"Of all women you should. I told you I could see it in his eyes,"'

laughed Lola.

"Not for me?" Elise cried in genuine surprise.

"For you."

"What did the man say?" she asked quickly.

"Some caddish thing, of course. Men are so nasty. I didn't have time to

get the particulars before you and Mr. Rutledge followed us in here.

But Ollie says it was just b-e-a-u-t-iful the way Mr. Rutledge dropped

him--and he's three times as big as Mr. Rutledge, too--"

"We've tried moral suasion, strategy, force, every expedient,"

interrupted Hazard as he and Rutledge came back into the dining-room,

"but the Scotch lass and her laddie positively decline to be fed by us.

They are fully supplied by their own ravings--ho! don't throw that salad

at me!"

"Here, take a dose of celery quick--a biblical pun like that is a too

serious tax upon the simple Congressional brain," said Lola.

Hazard looked foolish, and he felt like a fool; but what real manly

lover outside the story-books was ever else than foolish when love's fit

was upon him?

None of the quartette in the dining-room was the least bit hungry, and

it was but a very few moments till the young hostess led the way back to

the parlour, Elise and Rutledge following slowly. When they reached the

stairway Elise seated herself on the third step and by the gesture with

which she arranged her skirts invited Evans to a seat below her.

"Look at that," said Lola to Hazard, glancing over her shoulder as they

passed into the parlour. "Now she's going to be good to him."

"In the name of heavens, woman, you didn't tell her!"

"Why not? She's the very one that ought to know. She will not inform

the reporters."

"But what will she think of me?" asked Hazard in some concern.

"You? Why, you don't count! You are only a pawn in their game." As

his eyes flashed she added, with a bewildering tilt of her chin: "I

promise to make good all your losses."

"May my losses prosper!" prayed Hazard audibly.

* * * * *

Elise used a makeshift conversation with Rutledge till she heard the

humming accents of the others well going, and then--

"Mr. Rutledge," she said. "I wish to speak to you of your defence of my

name when that Mr. Smith--"

The suddenness of it routed all Rutledge's cool senses.

"Oh, Miss Phillips," he broke in, "I am so sorry that I should have done

anything to accentuate that abominable fellow's remark. I am so

heartily ashamed of my unpardonable boyish thoughtlessness and lack of

consideration that I cannot find words to express my contempt for

myself," etc., to the same effect, without giving Elise a chance to

speak, till she was surprised in turn, then amused, then annoyed.

Finally, in order to bring him to a reasonable coherency, she

interrupted his self-denunciations.

"What did Mr. Smith say of me, Mr. Rutledge?"

"I can't repeat that to you, Miss Phillips."

"You must if the words are decent. Tell me at once. I must know."

"He simply coupled your name with that of--Doctor Woods--the negro

who--lunched at your home in Cleveland."

Evans forced out the last half-dozen words with a visible effort--which

the girl may have misinterpreted.

"Oh!" She dropped her face in her hands. She had not dreamed of that

explanation. But she gathered herself in a moment. Every pennyweight

of her admirable pride came to her support. At the mention of "negro

luncheon" she was on guard against Rutledge, her kindly purpose

forgotten. She sat straight up and with a perfect dignity said:

"I thank you, Mr. Rutledge, for your well-meant efforts in my behalf,

but my father is abundantly able both to choose the guests who shall

dine at his table, and to protect my name, whenever indeed it shall need

a champion." She closed the discussion by rising.

Evans did not tarry long. He was too badly scattered. The other guests

soon followed, except Elise, who remained overnight at Lola's

insistence.

"Come right up to my room and tell me all about it.... What _did_ you

do to that miserable man? You ought to be spanked, Elise."

"I did nothing to him."

"And why didn't you? I said to Ollie when you sat down on the stairs,

'Now she's going to be good to him.' Did you tell him you knew?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"He--apologized," said Elise with a nervous laugh.

"_Apologized_! For mercy's sake!--and what else?"

"I accepted his apology--on condition he would not do it again;" and she

broke out into real mirth at sight of Lola's scandalized face.

*CHAPTER XVI*

If _The Mail's_ editorial was conservative, other papers were not so

respectful. It was worse even than Mrs. Phillips had predicted. All

over the South the papers ran the whole gamut of indignation and abuse

from lofty scorn all the way down to plain editorial fits. The entire

Southern press, Democratic, Republican, and Independent, except a few

sheets edited by negroes, were of one mind on the subject of negroes

dining with white men. Papers that had supported Mr. Phillips heartily

were all severe, some of them bitter, in their denunciations.

The Wordyfellow element in the school-fund fight welcomed the

President's act as a boon from heaven. They raised a howl that was heard

in every nook and corner of the Southland, and that by the very

thundering shock of its roar broke through and drove back the forces of

the negro's friends. The weak-willed were borne down and the timid and

the doubting were carried away by the purely physical force of noise or

by having lashed to fury their sometimes latent but ever-present terror

of the Black Peril. And not only the weak, indeed, and the timid and

the doubting went in crowds to the Wordyfellow camp, but strong men,

fearless men, men of the most philanthropic impulses toward the negro

race, men who had fought openly and ably the Wordyfellow propaganda,

became silent and began to waver, or deserted the negro's cause and

unhesitatingly espoused the other side.

In vain did the negro's staunchest friends proclaim their indignation at

the President's lunching with Bishop Martin and Doctor Woods, and try to

convince their people that the South should be true to its own interests

and do simple justice to the negro despite any act of his fool friends.

It was useless. The Southern people--the floating vote, the balance of

power--were in no mood to draw fine distinctions, nor to listen to

theories in face of facts. A careless hand had struck the wavering

balance, and the beam went steadily down.

Reports of defections began to come rapidly to Mr. Phillips. Those from

the negroes in the South told of the losses faithfully, but gave any

other than the true reason for the change of sentiment; while letters

from his white advisers told him more or less plainly that his negro

luncheon had done the damage and that the cause was as good as lost.

These reports roused the President's fighting blood. He sent for

Mackenzie.

"Read that stack of letters, Mac, and you will see that the negroes in

the South are in a fair way to be trampled to death. Now I must head

this thing off, and I want your help. I am determined to defeat that

Wordyfellow movement if there is power in the Federal government. I'll

not be content to have the laws annulled by the Federal Supreme Court

after they are passed, even if that can be done. We must find some way

to win this fight _in the elections_ and thus give the lie to these

prophecies that that luncheon has lost the battle."

So he and the astute Mackenzie rubbed their heads together for a week:

and finally came to a remedy so simple that they were ashamed not to

have thought of it at once. Simple indeed--if they could apply it. In

less than another week, Mr. Hare, the recognized administration

mouthpiece in the House, introduced a bill appropriating moneys from the

national treasury to the States in proportion to population for purposes

of public education. The milk in this legislative cocoanut was a

provision that the money apportioned to each State should be so

distributed among the individual public schools of the State that, when

taken together with the State's own appropriation, all the schools in

the State should be open for terms of equal length.

From statistics carefully compiled in the office of the Commissioner of

Education Mr. Phillips and Mr. Mackenzie had calculated the amount of

the appropriation so that if the Southern States adopted the Wordyfellow

plan the negro race would get virtually the whole of the appropriation

from the national government.

Elise Phillips, persuading herself that she was on the lookout for

reasons to despise Mr. Rutledge, regularly read the editorial column of

_The Mail_.

There one morning she learned that "the immediate effect of the

introduction of the Hare Bill in the House has been to transfer the

fight from the South to Washington. True, the Wordyfellow speakers and

press have raised a more ear-splitting howl, and opened up with every

gun of argument, appeal, abuse, expletive and rant; but they see clearly

that this bill if passed will bring all their schemes to naught, and

that the issue has been taken out of their hands. It is tantalizingly

uncertain to them whether the bill will become a law; for there are many

incidental questions and considerations which complicate the issue here

at Washington. But all men know that when Mr. Phillips sets his head

for anything he will move heaven and earth to attain it. Few doubt his

power to whip many Representatives and Senators into line or his

readiness to wield the whip if the fate of any pet measure demands it.

There is much of the Jesuit in Mr. Phillips' philosophy of life and

action. When he believes a thing is right he believes that no squeamish

notion should prevent his bringing it to pass. Keep your eyes on him!

It is always interesting to see how he does it."

"Pity he is not a Senator!" Elise commented with scornful impatience as

she threw the paper down, "that papa might whip him into becoming

modesty!"

* * * * *

At the moment Elise was so delivering her mind, a telegraph boy was

handing Rutledge a message. He tore it open and read:

"COLUMBIA, S.C, Jan. 9th, 191-.

"EVANS RUTLEDGE,

"Washington, D.C.

"Exactly how old are you and where do you vote?

"W. D. ROBERTSON."

Evans looked around behind the telegraph-sheet as if seeking an

explanation. He gazed quizzically at the messenger-boy, but that young

gentleman only grinned and then looked solemn.

"Well," Evans muttered, "what the devil's up Robbie's back now?"

He sat down and thought the thing over awhile. Then he constructed a

reply.

"WASHINGTON, Jan. 9th, 191-.

"W. D. ROBERTSON, Atty.-General,

"Columbia, S.C.

"Your telegram received. If it is official I decline to answer. _Entre

nous_ I will be thirty-one on the 29th of February at something like

twenty minutes past three in the morning--they didn't have a stopwatch

in the house. I vote in Cherokee County, Pacolet precinct, generally of

late in a cigar-box in the shed-room of Jake Sims's store where Gus

Herndon used to run a barber-shop when you and I were young, Maggie.

Why? EVANS RUTLEDGE."

"Send that _collect_, youngster. We'll make old Robbie pay for his

impertinence."

"Look here, sonny," he called to the boy who had gotten out the door,

"bring any answer to that down to the Capitol. I am going to have a

look at the Senate."

He was sitting beside Lola DeVale in the members' gallery when the

answer came.

"COLUMBIA, S.C, Jan. 9th, 191-.

HON. EVANS RUTLEDGE,

"Washington, D.C.

"Nothing much. The governor of South Carolina simply did not feel like

giving a United States Senatorship either to a boy or to a man from

another State. He is just mailing your commission as Jones's successor.

Don't decline it before you hear the whole story. Congratulations to

you.

"W. D. ROBERTSON."

"This has 'an ancient and fish-like smell.' Read it," Rutledge said to

Lola when he had recovered from his astonishment sufficiently to speak.

She took the telegram and while she was trying to interpret its import

Senator Killam came hurriedly into the gallery and seized upon Rutledge.

"I got a telegram from the governor half an hour ago and have been

trying to find you ever since," he exclaimed. "He has appointed

you--oh, you have heard, I see. Well, come right down with me. I want

to present you to your colleagues."

Evans could doubt no longer, and Lola DeVale had grasped the meaning of

it.

"I am so glad to be the first to congratulate you," she said, and he

felt the sincerity of her good wishes in her warm hand-grasp. Then

Senator Killam carried him off.

* * * * *

"I know it came 'like a bolt from the blue' to you," Robertson wrote to

him; "but the whys and wherefores need not mystify you. There cannot be

the slightest doubt of your ability to fill the office--full to the

brim; and the rest is easy. You know the old man fully intended all

along to contest for the place with Jones, whose term would have expired

with the old man's term as governor. Jones's demise, however, presented

a problem to him that has driven him to the verge of lunacy for a week.

He couldn't give himself the commission, of course. He couldn't resign

and get it, for the lieutenant-governor has been the avowed supporter of

LaRoque for the Senatorship. He couldn't give it to LaRoque or Pressley,

for the three of them are too evenly matched.... When he finally came to

the idea of appointing some one to fill the vacancy who was clearly not

in the running so that the primaries might settle it among the three of

them, I suggested you. He jumped at the idea.... The old man has every

reason to feel kindly toward you both for your father's sake and for

your own excellent work's sake, and he does not doubt your friendliness

to himself.... You will have less than six months in which to make a

name for yourself, but--perhaps--who can tell? ... I wish I had such an

opportunity. I am heartily glad you have it."

* * * * *

Senator Rutledge was pitched right into the middle of the fight on the

Hare Bill--and fight it was for him. Senator Killam essayed to take the

young man under his wing and chaperone his conduct according to his

ideas of the political proprieties, but he found that the junior Senator

had a mind of his own, and could not be managed, overawed or bullied.

This roused Mr. Killam's ire at once. He wasn't accustomed to it. The

dead Senator Jones had never had the effrontery to think for himself;

and for this youngster to presume to walk alone was more than Mr. Killam

could forgive.

Solely because of Mr. Killam's personal attitude and treatment of him,

Rutledge wished it were over and done with long before the finish; but

he never lost his nerve.

* * * * *

It seemed that the suspense would be ended quickly when the House under

pressure of the rules passed the Hare Bill almost without debate: but

when it came before the Senate it was evident at once that those

dignitaries would take abundance of time to consider it,--if for no

other reason than to prove to themselves they were the greatest

deliberative body on earth.

However, with all the Senate's deliberation the very frenzy of the

Wordyfellow crowd's screams evidenced their realization that their game

was balked--and that, too, in a manner that was maddening: for it left

them not the frenzied pleasure of fighting their precious battle against

the negro out to the end and going down to harmless defeat in

pyrotechnic glory. No; it placed them in a dilemma where they must

humiliate themselves by a surrender before the battle, or fight it to a

barren victory at the polls, which would not only bring actual benefit

to the negro in the South but also give to the Northern States the

lion's share of a large appropriation.

Facing this dilemma, they lost heart if they lost nothing of noise. In

all of the interested States except Mississippi serious discussion of

the question grew less and less rapidly, and was postponed until after

the Senate should vote. In Mississippi, however, the tension was

increased by the Senate's deliberation because the date set for the

election on the proposed Wordyfellow amendment to the State constitution

was some time before the Senate would be forced to vote. The

Mississippians could not decide for their lives whether they preferred

to vote on their amendment first or have the Senate vote first on the

bill. With a faint hope that the bill might not pass, they were in

obvious difficulties in either case.

Southern Senators were overwhelmed with all manner of conflicting and

confusing petitions, and as a result about one half of them favoured the

bill for one reason or another, while the other half more or less

bitterly opposed it. The discussion, when the bill finally came out of

committee, took the widest range,--from the constitutional objections

raised by the Texas Senator (whose State, having a large school-fund

income, did not need the appropriation) and the savage attacks upon the

negro race generally by Senator Killam, to the purely pro-educational

reasoning of most of the supporting Senators from the South--among whom

was Senator Ruffin--and the pro-negro speech of the young Senator

Rutledge.

The adjective _pro-negro_ may give an erroneous impression of Senator

Rutledge's ideas. The term is the Senator's own. From his speech in

full in the _Congressional Record_ the reader may determine for himself

whether the term is apt.

*CHAPTER XVII*

Senator Rutledge gave notice that on February 23d he would address the

Senate on the Hare Bill. On that day the galleries were crowded to hear

him, his State's delegation in the House was present in a body,

accompanied by many other representatives from North and South. No one

knew how he would vote, for he had listened much and talked little. He

said:

"Mr. President: There have been many terms used on this floor and in the

public prints since this bill was introduced, by which to distinguish

and define and lay open to public view the motives which are supposed to

lie behind the votes that will be cast for and against it.

"We have heard 'unconstitutional,' 'anti-negro,' 'pro-educational,'

'watch-dog of the treasury,' and others equally descriptive if less

parliamentary. I have not heard 'pro-negro.'

"So, to save my friends--and enemies, if I have any--the trouble of

search and imaginings, I adopt that term, '_pro-negro_,' as descriptive

of my attitude toward the matters affected by this bill.

"It is an open secret, Mr. President, that this measure, which bears the

non-committal title of 'an act to promote education' is a White House

production designed and introduced for the single purpose of defeating

what is known as the Wordyfellow school-fund movement in the South

generally, more specifically now in the State of Mississippi. Because I

think it will accomplish that purpose, both general and

special,--because I am 'for the negro,'--for him on his own

account,--for his elevation as a race to the highest level which his

essential nature in the purposes of God will permit him to

attain,--because I believe the success of the Wordyfellow movement would

mean his degradation, his hopeless continuance in his present low

estate,--because, in a word, I am _pro-negro_; I shall vote for this

bill.

"I should despise myself, sir, if I had within me other sentiments

toward any man or race of men, and I feel, therefore, that it is not

unbecoming in me to arrogate to myself the pure unselfishness of this

motive. And yet, sir, if the love of one's race may be called a selfish

passion, I must confess that right alongside of this unselfish desire

for the negro's welfare, there lies in my heart a selfish passion for

the progress, the multiplying prosperity and more abounding happiness of

my own people, the white men and women of the South, which desire also

with no less power but indeed with compelling forcefulness bids me to

oppose the Wordyfellow idea with every faculty and expedient, and

therefore to vote for this measure.

"I wish to make it clear at the outset that, while I shall heartily

support this White House bill, I give not the slightest credit to the

President for having prepared it and sent it here. He deserves none.

The bill is a necessity, and as such I vote for it: but the President is

the one man who has made it a necessity.

"If he had not injected into the situation his negro luncheon (and to

that I will pay my respects before I have finished), my people would

have defeated the Wordyfellow movement; for the battle was going our

way. It is as little as President Phillips can do now to suggest this

method, expensive though it is, to repair the damage he has done the

negro's cause in the South. He comes praying us to pay the negro out of

the difficulty in which he has involved him, and _as friends of the

negro_ there is nothing for us to do but furnish the money, however much

we may deplore the Executive folly that makes the outlay imperative.

"Now, Mr. President, let us inquire directly into the merits of the

Wordyfellow plan. The proposed amendment to the constitution of

Mississippi provides that the school fund shall be divided between the

white and negro schools in proportion to the taxes paid to the State by

each of the two races for school purposes. As there are six negroes to

four whites in the State, and as the negroes pay less than ten per cent

of the school taxes, such a division of the school fund will give the

white children thirteen days' schooling to the negro's one.

"Such a proposition is illogical, pernicious, insane.

"Look at the logic of it. Governor Wordyfellow defends the general

proposition by some scattering statistics which prove to his mind that

education generally is not good for the negro; but he justifies the

division of the school fund on the basis of contribution upon the

supposed principle that the negro will get back all that he pays in and

therefore cannot rightly demand more.

"That so-called principle will not hold water a moment. I would say to

the gentlemen from the South, Mr. President,--to those who are

supporting the Wordyfellow propaganda--that if they proceed on that

theory they must give to _every_ man what he pays into the treasury:

which means that the State must expend more for the tuition of the sons

of the rich than the sons of the poor. If every man has a right to

demand for his own children the taxes he pays for school purposes, then

the State has no right to tax one man to educate another's child--and

the promoters of this idea have pulled down the whole public school

system about their ears.

"If such a division is proposed on the ground that no sort of education

is good for the negro, and we believe that, then let us take away from

the negro by constitutional amendment _all_ the money collected from him

by the State for school purposes and give it to the white children.

That would be logical, that would be sensible, that would be Scriptural.

Let us be logical and sensible and fearless about this matter.

"But I cannot think these leaders of the Wordyfellow forces believe

that, Mr. President, though I fear that they have persuaded thousands of

their less intelligent following to believe it thoroughly. No, you do

not believe it; but you do believe that some particular kinds of

education--literary education, for example--is positively harmful to the

negro, while some other particular sort--industrial education,

perhaps--is beneficial and would uplift the negro race.

"If you admit that,--and it has been conceded on this floor by some of

the leaders of the Wordyfellow movement that industrial education is

good for the negro and will make a better man and a better citizen of

him; then in face of the appalling menace of his ignorance and depravity

which have been painted in such lurid colours here, _let us by

constitutional amendment give him more than his per capita share of the

school tax_. Yes, let us give to him proportionately in keeping with

our keenest fears, our wildest terror, of the Black Peril--all if need

be--to educate him _in that particular line that will uplift him_ and

make a safe citizen of him, in order that we may save ourselves alive

and escape the woes of that peril. All education administered by the

State is given in the exercise of a sort of quasi police power--to

protect itself from the violence of ignorance: and we would be well

within an ancient principle if we should lay out extraordinary funds to

police the black cesspools that threaten our civic life.

"It is clearly demonstrable, therefore, that upon any theory of the

negro's inability or limited ability to be benefited by education, or

upon the assumption of its positive hurtfulness to him, the Wordyfellow

amendment is absolutely illogical. The whole Wordyfellow proposition is

based upon a false assumption in the first place, and the Wordyfellow

remedy does not have the merit of being true even to the fictitious

Wordyfellow premises. For all this agitation against the education of

the negro race proceeds upon the theory that the negro is not altogether

a man, that he is without the one aptitude common to all other peoples,

white, yellow or red--the disposition to be uplifted in civilization by

the spread of a higher intelligence among his race.

"That theory, Mr. President, is false! And while I believe the great

majority of my people reject it despite the insistence with which it has

been in small measure openly, in large measure indirectly, presented to

them for acceptance, I have thought it worth while to inquire closely

and specifically into the effect of the _higher literary_ education upon

the black men and women who have been so fortunate as to acquire it. I

give to the Senators not only as the result of my investigation but as

the result of my personal observation as a man brought up in the South,

my sincere opinion that education of the negro in the usual literary

studies from the kindergarten to the college, as well as along

industrial lines, is as a rule beneficial and uplifting to him.

"It is true that a smattering of education in some instances gives a

negro the idea that he is to get a living without work, and that such

notions would not be wholesome if prevailing among a population which

must do manual labour. This need not alarm us, however; for it is not

an unusual thing for a college education to give a white boy the same

notion. We do not limit his education on that account. In the

post-graduate school of Hard Knocks he always finds out--and no less

surely will the negro boy of similar delusion learn--especially as

education becomes more and more a possession of the masses and not a

privilege of the few--that the great majority of men, whether black or

white, lettered or unlettered, must work, and work with their hands.

"Let me add, lest I be misunderstood, that while I believe the negro

race as a race will be hewers of wood and drawers of water for

generations to come, and that education will be beneficial to them as a

toiling class, I am not of those who believe that when by education you

spoil a negro field-hand you have committed a crime. I have no sympathy

with a sentiment that would confine any man to a limited though

respectable and honourable work when he has within him the aspiration

and the ability to serve his race and his time in broader fields.

"Those, in a nutshell, Mr. President, are the primary reasons why I am

opposed to the Wordyfellow movement, and shall vote for this bill. The

secondary reasons are hardly less forceful.

"I want this bill passed and passed quickly in order to avoid the

pernicious incidental effects of the agitation of this question among my

people. It has bred and is breeding antagonisms between the white and

black races in the South such as did not result from the horrors of

reconstruction or the excitement of negro disfranchisement. In those

issues the negro truthfully was told and well may have believed that the

white man was driven to protect himself against the ignorance and

depravity of the black. In this case, however, the negro feels, and

rightly, that the white man would condemn him perpetually to that

ignorance and depravity. From the negro's view-point the white man's

motive is now what it never was before: base, worse than selfish,

wantonly, vindictively cruel.

"Again the propagation of the Wordyfellow idea teaches incidentally that

in this democratic country, where by the very nature of our institutions

the welfare of each is the welfare of all, where forsooth a Christian

civilization has reached its highest development, even here, the strong

may desert the weak and leave them to their own pitiful devices and

defences.

"It teaches also the doctrine--more potent for evil--that the government

may take note of racial classes for the purpose of dealing out its

favours and benefits with uneven hands, preferring one to the other. If

it may do this when the class differences are racial, it is but half a

step to the proposition that it may do so when the differences exist

whether they be racial or other. It takes no seer to see that after

that proposition--no, _with_ that proposition--comes the deluge.

"Such, Mr. President, are some, not all, of the incidental effects of

the propagation of the Wordyfellow idea which clearly and with vast

conservatism may be called pernicious. But there is yet another effect

which will be inevitable upon the adoption of the Wordyfellow plan, and

which has been in large measure produced already by the discussion of

it, in the light of which deliberate advocacy of the Wordyfellow idea

fairly may be called insane; and that is the severing of all bonds of

sympathy and good-will between the races when the negro is told by white

men, 'Here, take the pitiful portion that is yours, and go work out your

own bitter, black salvation, alone--if you can.'

"All this agitation, all our concern, is predicated upon the deadly

menace which this people, numbering one-third of the population of the

South and gathered in many sections in overwhelming majorities, is to

our civic and industrial happiness and progress: and it does seem the

sheerest insanity to sever the bonds of sympathy and helpfulness which

now bind the races together, surrender all our interest and right to

control in the method of the negro's uplifting, and leave him to develop

along any haphazard or dangerous lines without sympathy, respect, or

regard for us, our ideas, or our ideals.

"The negro has been enough of a problem and a terror to my people with

all our ability to control him through his ignorance, his fears, his

affection and his respect for us. We have been careless at times

perhaps as to how we made use of these instruments for his management.

The more fools we if we now throw away his affection and his respect,

cut loose from him entirely, and leave him to develop under teachers of

his own race who with distorted vision or prejudiced heart will replace

his ignorance with a knowledge at least of his brute strength, and

cancel his fears with hate.

"My people give freely hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly to the

degraded of other lands in whom they have only the interest which

Christians have in universal humanity, and they place in the calendar of

the saints the names of the godly men and women who go to work

personally to uplift the heathen. I do not think that in their cool

senses their Christian impulses, to which is added the motive of

self-interest, will permit them to cut off their contributions to and

support of any instrumentality which will elevate the degraded in their

own land whose depravity is so pregnant with dire possibilities to them.

I pray the day to come when, among my people, it shall be thought just

as praiseworthy, as noble, as saintly for a Southern white man to give

his life and energies to the personal instruction, uplifting and

redemption of the negroes in America as of the negroes in Africa or the

heathen in any land.

"That prayer, Mr. President, which is sincerely from my heart, brings me

to the discussion of President Phillips' negro policy. I shall not

expect to see the prayer answered so long as the Chief Executive of this

nation shows a disposition to deal so carelessly, so arbitrarily, with

such cock-sure flippancy, with the convictions, prejudices if you will,

of the brave and generous people who are face to face in their race

problem not with a far-away academic question about which they may

safely speculate and theorize, but face to face with a present,

tangible, appalling issue in whose solution is life or death to them.

"To my people the consequences are so vital that they sometimes are led

perhaps beyond what is really necessary in the way of defence,--for any

sane man prefers to be doubly guarded against death. So it has been

that while they are not favourable to the Wordyfellow plan they have

been stampeded to it by the Phillips negro luncheon.

"Let me explain that when I speak of the President's negro policy I do

not mean to include his appointments of negroes to office. I think we

of the South have in these matters to some extent confused the issues,

and proportionately weakened our position before the outside public.

Not that I approve of appointing negroes to office in the South, for I

do not. I think the weight of all considerations is against it. But the

considerations either for or against it are considerations of

expediency. They are not vital. If the President wishes to vindicate

his negro appointments on the ground that his appointees are of his

party, the best men of his party, and fairly efficient,--let him. Such

reasons have been given for political appointments time out of mind,

although they are not conclusive in any case and especially not in the

matter of negro office-holding in the South. _But let him not_ go into

cheap heroics such as were indulged in by a recent negro appointee, who

tragically exclaimed that if his appointment was not confirmed his race

would be set back thirty years!

"Such rant is only ridiculous. Office-holding is not a recognized or an

actual instrumentality for uplifting or civilizing a people; and it is

not a theory of this or any other form of government that its mission or

method is to uplift its citizenship, white or black, by making

place-holders of them. It is not closing any legitimate door of hope to

negro or white man to refuse him a Presidential appointment. The 'door

of hope,' whatever else it may be to white or black, is not the door to

a government office.

"The real basis of the race issue, Mr. President, has nothing to do with

politics or political appointments, with office-getting or

office-holding. If by some trick of chance a negro--some prodigy lofty

in character and in the science and wisdom of statecraft--were President

of this nation to-day, and were by unanimous consent a model Executive,

the real race problem would not be affected a feather's weight. The

world must understand that the Southern white people in the measures

they have taken and will take to protect themselves against the negro

are impelled by weightier considerations than the pre-emption of the

dignities or emoluments of politics. It is true that they have taken the

governments of the Southern States into their own hands, away from negro

majorities in many sections. It may be true that in order to do this

they have nullified provisions of the Federal constitution. But they

have done so from no such small motive as a desire to hold public

office.

"My people have all respect for the wisdom of the makers of the

constitution, who framed an instrument perfectly suited to the

conditions as they existed at the time and continued to exist for eighty

years, prescribing the method of majority rule for a people who were of

an approximately equal civic intelligence and virtue. But when the

conditions were changed and a vast horde of illiterate and--in the hands

of unscrupulous leaders--vicious voters were added to the electorate,

stern necessity forbade them longer to give a sentimental support to

so-called fundamental principles in the constitution and permit

ignorance to rule intelligence and vice to rule virtue.

"The 'fundamental principles' in that constitution, Mr. President, are

nothing more or less than wisely conceived _policies_ which were tried,

proved, and found good under the conditions for which they were devised.

The 'fundamental principle' upon which the race problem of the South may

be solved will have been discovered with certainty only _after_ a

solution has been accomplished by the conscientious effort and best

thought of Southern white men.

"And they will solve this problem. It can never be settled, of course,

till Southern white men acquiesce in its settlement. They will settle

it in righteousness and will accept with gratefulness any suggestion

which their fellow countrymen have to offer in a spirit of sympathy and

helpfulness. But it may as well be understood that any such exhibition

as the President's negro luncheon, which affronts the universal

sentiment of the final arbiters of this question, must necessarily put

further away the day of settlement. The negro problem cannot be worked

out by any simple little rule o' thumb, and the negro will always be the

loser by any such melodramatic display of super-assertive backbone and

misinformed conscience.

"The President would settle this matter upon a purely theoretical

academic basis, this matter that in its practical effects will not touch

him nor his family nor his section, but will affect vitally the

happiness, the lives, the destiny of a chivalrous people whose ideas,

traditions, sentiments and convictions he carelessly ignores or

impetuously insults. Such exhibitions do not become a brave man. They

betoken, rather, a headstrong man, an inconsiderate man, a thoughtless

man, a fanatical man. It does seem that President Phillips would have

learned wisdom from the experience of his illustrious predecessor,

President Roosevelt, who did somewhat less of this sort of thing

once--and only once.

"Mr. President, it has been repeatedly said that the hostility of the

white people of the South to social intermingling with the negro race is

an instinct--a race instinct. I do not so consider it,--and for two

reasons: first, because many men of Anglo-Saxon blood--and of these

President Phillips is the most conspicuous example--do not have such an

instinct; second, because instinct is not the result of reason, while

the Southern white man's opposition to social recognition of the negro

is defensible by the purest, most dispassionate reason. These

convictions are so well fixed in the Southern mind that they may appear

to be instinctive and measurably serve the purpose of instinct; but the

vital objections of my people to intermingling socially with the negro

are not founded in any race antipathy, whim, pretence, or prejudice.

They are grounded in the clearest common sense, and as such only do I

care to present or defend them.

"In face of the disaster to be averted, I could wish that it were an

instinct; for instinct does not fail in a crisis. But men are more than

beasts: the power to rise is given to them conditioned upon the chance

to fall. So in this race matter: instinct does not forbid a white man

to marry a black woman; instinct--more's the horror!--does not forbid a

white woman to wed a negro man. For this reason it is--for the very

lack of a race instinct is it--that the social intermingling of the

white and black races, as advocated and practised by President Phillips,

would inevitably bring to pass an amalgamation of the races with all its

foul brood of evils.

"President Phillips, living in a section of the country where negroes

are few--especially such as are of sufficient intelligence to be

interesting to a man of his attainments--does not dream of amalgamation.

I would not insult him by assuming such a thing. And yet upon a

superficial estimate of conditions in the South he gives us this

impulsive exhibition of what in one of his high official position is

criminal carelessness.

"The positive element of crime in it is not in the affront which a

Presidential negro luncheon puts upon Southern sentiment, but in the

suggestion to Southern and Northern people alike that a social

intermingling of the races--which means amalgamation, however blind he

may be to the fact--is the solution of the race problem. The crime

would be complete in all its horror if the South, if the nation, should

follow his lead and achieve the logical result of his teaching.

"From long and intimate acquaintance with the negro's character, my

people know that the Phillips negro luncheon stimulates not the negro's

ambition and endeavour to improve himself as it tickles and arouses his

vanity. When the ordinary darkey hears of it he thinks it not a

recognition of the superior abilities of Bishop Martin and Doctor Woods,

but a social recognition of the negro race; and forthwith deems himself

the equal of the white man and desires unutterable things. And not

without reason.

"The black people appreciate what the President's act means for them.

They do not misinterpret its tendency. A prominent negro said in a

recent mass meeting in Richmond: 'No two peoples having the same

religion and speaking the same tongue, living together, have ever been

kept apart. This is well known and is one of the reasons why the

dominant race is crushing out the strength of the negro in the South. I

am afraid we are anarchistic and I give warning that if this oppression

in the South continues the negro must resort to the torch and the sword,

and that the Southland will become a land of blood and desolation.'

"This inflammatory utterance indicates the interpretation put by negroes

upon President Phillips' open-dining-room-door policy, and the nature of

the hopes and aspirations it arouses in the black man's heart. And the

serious thing is the element of truth in the negro's erroneous

statement. It is true as gospel that no two races of people, living

together, have ever _intermingled socially_ without amalgamating. It is

hardly necessary to cite evidence of that fact or to give the reasons

underlying it. It might be taken as axiomatic that social intermingling

means amalgamation.

"If men and women were attracted to each other and loved and mated

because of equal endowments of virtue, or intelligence, or beauty, or

upon any basis of similar accomplishments, tastes, or mental, moral or

physical excellences, then a gulf-stream of Anglo-Saxon blood might flow

unmixed and pure through a sea of social contact with the negro race;

but until love and marriage are placed among the exact sciences, social

intermingling of races will ever result as it ever has resulted: in the

general admixture of racial bloods.

"When racial barriers are broken down and it is proper for negroes and

whites to associate freely and intimately, when you--white men--receive

negroes on a plane of social equality, your women will marry them, your

sons will take them to wife. Shall you say to your daughter of the

negro whom you receive in your home: 'He is an excellent man but--do not

marry him'? Shall you say to your son enamoured of a quadroon: 'She is

a very worthy young woman and an ornament to our circle of friends,

but--I have chosen another wife for you'? When did such considerations

ever guide or curb the fancy of the youthful heart or diminish the

travel to Gretna Green? No, the line never has been drawn between free

social intercourse and intermarriage; and while the Southern people

believe they could draw that line if any people could, they do not

propose to make any reckless experiments where all is to be lost and

nothing gained.

"A president of one of our great universities is quoted as saying: 'The

Southern white sees a race danger in eating at the same table with a

negro; he sees in being the host or the guest of a negro an act of race

infidelity. The Northern white sees nothing of the kind. The race

danger does not enter into his thoughts at all. To be the host or the

guest of a negro, a Mexican or a Japanese would be for him simply a

matter of present pleasure, convenience or courtesy. It would never

occur to him that such an act could possibly harm his own race. His

pride of race does not permit him to entertain such an idea. This is a

significant difference between Northern white and Southern white.'

"In noting significant differences between Northern white and Southern

white this authority must have been advertent to the fact that the pride

of race of his 'Northern white' does not prevent them from furnishing

the overwhelming majority of interracial marriages with negroes, as well

as with Chinese, Japanese and every other alien race--this, too, with a

very small negro population. If the negroes were proportionately as

numerous in the North as in the South and such sentiments prevailed, how

long, with interracial marriages increased in numbers in proportion to

opportunity, would there be an Anglo-Saxon 'Northern white' to have a

pride of race? If with these facts before his eyes the distinguished

educator sees no race danger in the social mingling of white and black

people, it easily may be inferred that he sees no objection to

amalgamation.

"The Southern white man does see a race danger in these social

amenities, Mr. President; for he cannot view amalgamation or the

faintest prospect of it with any sentiment save horror: and he fortifies

himself against that danger not only with the peculiar pride of race--of

which he has a comfortable supply--but with every expedient suggested by

his common sense, his experience, and by the horrible example which that

distinguished educator's 'Northern white' has furnished him.

"In providing against this danger my people are moved from without by

the sight of no occasional negro such as at odd times crosses this New

Englander's vision, nor from within by any unreasonable or jealous

hatred of the negro such as has characterized certain 'Northern whites'

from the time they burned negro orphan asylums in resentment at being

drafted to fight their country's battles down to this good day when they

mob a negro for trying to do an honest day's work. No! the Southern

white man is driven to his defences by a sentiment void of offence

toward the negro, and by the daily impending spectacle of black,

half-barbarous hosts who menace the Anglo-Saxon civilization of the

South and of the nation.

"President Phillips has modestly borrowed from one of his predecessors

words with which to defend his social amenities to negroes. He quotes

and says he would 'bow his head in shame' were he 'by word or deed to

add anything to the misery of the awful isolation of the negroes who

have risen above their race.' Two things may be said of that, Mr.

President: first, isolation has been the price of leadership in all

ages, and the negroes who are the pioneers of their race in their long

and painful journey upward may not hope to escape it: second, the

President's borrowed sentimental reason cuts the ground from under his

feet, for that forcible Rooseveltian phrase, 'the misery of the awful

isolation of black men who have risen above their race,' concedes the

premises on which the South's contention is based, since it admits there

is such a great gulf between the negro _race_ and the _risen_ negro that

his isolation fitly may be described in the words 'misery,' 'awful.' It

is a peculiar order of Executive intellect and sensibility that can have

such a keen sense of the misery which association with the lowly of his

own race brings to an educated negro--who cannot in the very nature of

things have put off all his hereditary deficiencies and tastes in a

generation; and that yet seems not to be touched with any sense of the

unspeakable misery such association and its inevitable consequences

would have for my people--his Anglo-Saxon brethren--who, if there be any

virtue in the refining processes of civilization, any redemptive power

in the Christian religion, any progression in the purposes of God in the

earth, are a thousand years ahead of the negro--any negro--in every

racial excellence.

"Oh, but, you say, President Phillips means for us to associate only

with those who are worthy, those who have 'risen.' Even that would be

fatal, Mr. President. Beyond the truth already stated that

considerations of merit will be forgotten and brushed aside if the

social racial barrier is broken down at any point, and that social

intermingling inevitably leads to intermarriage, there is a greater

fact, a deeper truth, underlying this question. That fact, that truth,

is that in estimating the result of mixing racial bloods not the man

only and his personal accomplishments or individual culture must be

considered, but his heredity, his race peculiarities and proclivities,

every element that has gone into his blood.

"An occasional isolated negro may have broken the shackles of ignorance,

measurably and admirably brought under control the half-savage passions

of his nature, acquired palpable elegances of person and manner, and

taken on largely the indefinable graces of culture: yet beneath all this

creditable but thin veneer of civilization there slumber in his blood

the primitive passions and propensities of his immediate ancestors,

which are transmitted through him as latent forces of evil to burst out

in his children and grandchildren in answer to the call of the wild. A

man is not made in one generation or two. Every man gets the few ruling

passions of his life from the numberless endowments of a hundred

progenitors, and these few show out, while scores of others run so deep

in his blood that they never crop out in his deeds but pass quietly on

as static forces of good or evil to his children and their children

before rising to the surface as dynamics in life and character.

"A Northern gentlewoman in a recent magazine article, defending her

willingness to offer social courtesies to a prominent negro, speaks of

him as one 'of whom an exquisite woman once said he has the soul of a

Christian, the heart of a gentleman, and the eyes of the jungle.' That

illustrates the idea perfectly, Mr. President,--_the eyes of the

jungle_. Despite the fact that it is easier to breed up physical than

temperamental qualities in man or beast, easier to breed out physical

than mental or moral or spiritual blood-traits, this negro, with all his

culture, with a large mixture of white blood in his veins, has yet in

his very face that sinister mark--the eyes of the jungle: and in his

blood who shall say what jungle passions, predilections and impulses,

nobly and hardly held in check, that hark back to the African wilds from

which they are so lately transplanted.

"A negro--any primitive being--may be developed mentally in one or two

generations to the point where a certain polish has been put upon his

mind and upon his manners; his purposes may be gathered and set toward

the goal of final good; the whole trend of his life may be set upward:

but there is yet between his new purposes and the savagery of the

primitive man in him a far thinner bulwark of heredity than protects a

white man from the elemental brute and animal forces of his nature. A

number of educated negroes in this country to-day are superior in

culture of mind and in personal morals to many white men, but even these

individual shining lights of the negro race do not possess the power to

endow their offspring so favourably as white men of less polish but

longer seasoned hereditary strength of mental and moral fibre.

"It always offends a proper sense of decency to hear the suggestion that

the negro may be bred up by crossing his blood with that of white

men,--for the obvious reason that with our ideas of morals the most

common principles of the breeder's art cannot be applied to the problem:

but one single fact which eliminates such cold-blooded animal methods

from our consideration is that when animals are cross-bred it is in the

hope and for the purpose of combining mutually supplementary elements of

strength and of eliminating supplementary weaknesses; while in this race

matter the Anglo-Saxon is the superior of the negro in every racial

characteristic--in physical strength and grace, in mental gifts and

forces, and in spiritual excellence. Even if amalgamation did the very

best that could be expected of it, it offers to the world nothing and to

the white man less than nothing: for it would be a compromise, a

striking of an average, by which naught is added to the total: it would

pull down the strong to upraise the weak, degrade the superior to uplift

the inferior: it would be a levelling process, not a method of progress.

_And yet amalgamation does not even that much_, for it does not make an

average-thick, even-thick retaining wall of culture between the hybrid

product and the weaknesses of his mottled ancestry. There are always

blow-holes in this mongrel culture, for heredity does not work by

averages. It is an elusive combination of forces whose eccentricities

and resultants cannot be formulated, calculated, or fore-determined. It

is certain only that by no mere manipulation of it can the slightest

_addition_ be made to the stock of ancestral virtues. Only slow

processes working in each individual through generation after generation

can add increments of strength to racial fibre.

"Therefore, if the negro will insist upon some _race manipulation_ in

order to raise the average of intelligence, thrift and morality in our

national citizenship, the only safe and sane method is to take measures

to restrict the increase of the negro race and let it die out like the

Indian. But, you scream, that would be to suggest the annihilation of a

race God has put here for some wise purpose! Even so: but amalgamation

would no less surely annihilate _the race_--two races--and fly in the

face of a Providence that has segregated all races with no less

distinctness of purpose, and so far has visited with disaster all

attempts to violate that segregation.

"Now, Mr. President, what is the immediate past history, status and

condition in Africa and America of this race with which Southern white

men are asked to mingle socially? What are the racial endowments of

these _risen_ negroes whom we are urged by lofty example to invite into

our drawing-rooms upon terms of broadest equality--for upon other terms

would be a mockery--as eligible associates, companions, suitors,

husbands for our sisters and daughters?--for a sensible father or

brother does not admit white men to his home on any other basis. Of

what essential racial elements and sources is the negro, risen and

unrisen alike?

"Let answer the scientists and explorers, missionaries and

travellers,--a long list of them, English, French, German, stretching

all the way back a hundred years before there was a negro problem in the

South. I quote verbatim, as nearly as the form will permit, their very

words and phrases. Listen.

"The negro in Africa was, and is yet, in largest measure 'Without law

except in its very crudest form'--'no law at all as we conceive it'--'in

densest savage ignorance'--'no writing, no literature, no arts, no

sciences'--'some development of perceptive and imitative faculties and

of memory, but little of the higher faculties of abstract

reasoning'--'in temperament intensely emotional, fitful, passionate,

cruel'--'without self-control in emotional crises, callously indifferent

to suffering in others, easily aroused to ferocity by sight of blood or

under great fear'--'particularly deficient in strength of will,

stability of purpose and staying power'--'dominated by impulse, void of

foresight, unable to realize the future or restrain present

desire'--'indolent, lazy, improvident, neglectful, happy-go-lucky,

innately averse to labour or to care'--'given to uncleanness'--'an eater

of snakes and snails, cannibal, eating his own dead'--'vilely

superstitious, a maker of human sacrifices, charm-wearing,

fetich-worshipping'--'of a religion grossly anthropomorphic, explaining

all natural phenomena by a reference to evil spirits'--'his religion has

no connection with morality, nothing to do with man's relation to

man'--'thieving his beloved pastime, deception more common than

theft'--'national character strongly marked by duplicity'--'lying

habitually and thinking lying an enviable accomplishment'--'a more

thorough and unhesitating liar than one of these negroes is not to be

found anywhere'--'cruelly obliges his women to work'--'sensual,

polygamous, unchaste'--'buying and selling his women'--'valuing his

daughter's virginity solely as a marketable commodity'--'accounting

adultery simply as a trespass upon a husband's property rights, and

seduction and rape as a violence only to parent's property in daughters

as destroying their marketable value'--'wifehood is but an enslavement

to the husband's will'--'no conception of chastity as a virtue'--'of

strong sexual passions'--'a devoted worshipper at the shrine of his

phallic gods'--'sexual instincts dominate even the most public

festivals, and public dances exhibit all degrees of sex suggestion.'

"Those in short, Mr. President, are some of the horrible details of the

bestial degradation of the west-coast Africans, from whom our

slave-marts were recruited almost to the time of the Civil War, and who,

says Keane, are 'the very worst sweepings of the Sudanese plateau,' and,

Ellis says, are 'the dregs and offscourings of Africa.'

"Such was the negro in Africa. What he is in America, only my people

know. He has been the gainer at all points, the loser at none, because

of his enforced residence here and his bondage to Southern white men:

and yet that awful picture of the negro in Africa is so startlingly

familiar to one who has spent his life in the South that he examines it

closely with something of fear.

"He finds the colouring too vividly heavy and some details untrue for a

picture of the negro in America to-day: but the negro as the Southern

white man knows him is too alarmingly alike, too closely akin to, that

African progenitor. He has advanced--yes! but just how much, and _just

how little_, from out the shadow of that awful category of horrors, my

people know.

"They know that he has but just emerged from those depths that those

bestial racial traits held in check by the man's law have only well

begun to be refined by a change of environment and the slow processes of

heredity: and yet we, white men of the South, are in a way advised to

treat as our social equals certain immediate heirs to such a blood

inheritance because, forsooth, they have _risen_.

"We resent bitterly the insulting suggestion, however high or

respectable or official its source: and we call upon you, white men of

the North, to warn you against appeals for social recognition as a balm

for 'the misery of the awful isolation of black men who have risen above

their race.' When the blood of your daughter or your son is mixed with

that of one of this race, however _risen_, redolent of newly applied

polish or bewrapped with a fresh culture, how shall sickly

sentimentalities solace your shame if in the blood of your mulatto

grandchild the vigorous red jungle corpuscles of some savage ancestor

shall overmatch your more gentle endowment, and under your name and in a

face and form perhaps where a world may see your very image in darker

hue there shall be disported primitive appetites, propensities, passions

fit only to endow an Ashanti warrior or grace the orgies of an African

bacchanalia? In Heaven's name think to the bottom of this

question!--and think _now_! Await not the day '_when your fear cometh_

as desolation, _and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when

distress and anguish cometh upon you_.' Do not be distracted by

considerations that are superficial and incidental--such for example as

the negro's record for criminal assaults upon women. The crime of rape

will be abated by some means, but long after that must the negro develop

before he loses his primal jungle habit of regarding woman as a personal

possession. It is a matter of attitude and not of assault: and as in

his fundamental attitude toward women, so in every racial characteristic

the superiority of the white man is blood deep, generations old,

ingrained, inherent, essential.

"Knowing this, my people despise President Phillips' social amenities to

negroes of high degree. They do not fear the issue; but what insults and

outrages them is that a personage in the highest official position, by

an act in itself impulsive, empty, and futile, should put desires and

hopes of miscegenation into the minds and hearts of the inflammable,

muttering, passionate black masses of the South. Standing themselves

ever in the shadow of dire calamity which they are facing and must face

for long years to come as they painfully work out a righteous and

practical solution of their problem, my people cry out to you, oh, white

men of the North, of the insidious danger in these sentimental social

practices of an exuberant Executive; and we tell you that, however well

or ill you may guard the purity and integrity of your race, we will

stand fast. Whatever else may or may not be true, we will never

acknowledge any equality on the negro's side that does not _overtake_

the white race in its advancing civilization, and we will certainly not

submit to an equality produced by degrading the white race to or toward

the negro's level. We will not make with the negro a common treasure of

our Anglo-Saxon blood by putting it in hotch-pot with his in a mongrel

breed.

"The Anglo-Saxon has blazed the way of civilization for a world to

follow in: but if he, the torch-bearer, the pioneer, goes back to join

hands with the tribes who are following afar his torch and trail, then

the progression of civilization and of character must not only stop but

must actually recede for him to effect a juncture with the black and

backward race in the blood of a hybrid progeny. There the fine edge

would be taken off every laudable characteristic of the white man.

There the splendid Anglo-Saxon spirit of leadership and initiative would

be neutralized by the sluggish blood of the Ethiop race. There the

Anglo-Saxon's fine energies and clear sensibilities would be deadened

and muddled by the infusion of this soporific into his veins. There

vile, unknown, ancestral impulses, the untamed passions of a barbarous

blood, would be planted in the Anglo-Saxon's very heart.

"You may believe that in the dim beginning God by imperial decree set

the dividing line between these races; or, less orthodox and more coldly

scientific, you may know that Nature, impartial mother of men, giving

her white and black sons equal endowment and an even start in body, mind

and spirit, since has stood, in unerring wisdom still impartial, to

watch the white bound away from the black in his rush toward that

perfection of mind, of heart, of character, which she has set as goal

for the striving of her children. From whichever view-point you look

upon the age-long history of men and the age-long lead of white men over

their black brothers,--whether evolutionist or traditionist, scientist

or mystic, you offer violence to your own particular deity, be it God or

Nature, when in their present measureless inequality of development you

by amalgamation would beat back the white into the lagging footsteps and

gross animalism of the black.

"Menacing thus the effectiveness and integrity of a race which is the

pathfinder for the progress of a world of men, the danger is not only a

race danger, but a danger to universal civilization; and the

preventative is a social separation of the white and black races in

America _from the lowest to the highest_,--at least, yes in all reason,

at the dictate of the plainest common sense, _at least_, if so be, till

the black becomes approximately equal to the white in racial excellence.

After which let the ethnologists take the question and give us the

answer of science as to the advisability of mixing racial bloods.

"Naturally you ask me when the time of equality in racial excellence

will come. I answer that I commit myself unreservedly to the support of

every means used for the negro's uplifting; I admit--nay more, I

contend--that we white men cannot be dogs in the manger with

civilization; we cannot as a Christian people even hope that the negro

race may not come _up_ to our level, nor can there be any reason why we

should refuse to acknowledge that race as our equal if it shall indeed

become our equal. And yet, while I would not in puny wisdom presume to

foretell the purposes of God in the earth, nor to set bounds to the

efficacy of his unspeakable redemption, nor to appoint the places of

white, black, yellow, red or brown men in the pageantry of 'that far-off

divine event toward which the whole creation moves'--yet, I say, with

carefully acquired information of the negro's history and habits in

Africa, and with an intimate knowledge of his present status and rate of

progress toward civilization in America, I tell you frankly that the day

of his approximate equality in racial excellence with the white man is

beyond the furthest reach of my vision into the future."

*CHAPTER XVIII*

Senator Killam was against the bill tooth and nail,--and he was against

Rutledge. He obtained the floor and began to speak in a desultory but

picturesque fashion in ridicule of some of the junior Senator's

new-fangled heresies almost before Rutledge had caught his breath, and

his vitriolic opening stayed the steps of many who in courtesy would

have gone over to Rutledge's seat to felicitate him upon his maiden

effort. Mr. Killam presented his felicitations openly and with such a

mixture of sarcasm, irony and some seeming admiration that his colleague

was puzzled. When Mr. Killam talked his dearest enemy would stop to

listen. Rutledge, tired and blown, leaned back in his chair to hear him

thunder.

As he sank back into a comfortable pose he caught sight for the first

time of Lola DeVale and Elise Phillips in the gallery. They had heard

his speech from start to finish,--and were differently affected by it.

Lola was more impressed with the Senator's manner than by his words.

"Senator Rutledge verily believes all that he says against the negroes,"

she had commented; "but surely they are not so black as he paints them.

Papa says that it is impossible for a Southern man to judge the negro

fairly."

Elise did not reply. She was filled with revulsion amounting almost to

nausea, and her temper was on edge. As her father's daughter, the

personal element was unbearably irritating to her. She resented the

entire situation and discussion. She had not known what was under

consideration, nor who was to speak, and she would have left the gallery

if she had not felt that it would be beating a retreat. She also had a

desire to see whether Evans had the impudence to say what he thought

right in her face.

In her stay in the South she had seen a very disreputable class of

negroes, and under the spell of Rutledge's words her antipathies were

over-excited to such a degree that she was faint with disgust. On the

other hand she was full of barely suppressed anger. Rutledge smiled a

salutation to the young women; and though Elise was looking straight at

him she did not join Lola in her gracious acknowledgment.

"Don't you see Mr. Rutledge, Elise? He waits for your smile like a dog

for a bone."

"I wish that man were dead," Elise declared.

Lola raised her eyebrows and scanned the profile of her friend for some

moments, and there came into her mind an idea that appeared to be worth

some thinking over....

If Senator Rutledge was distasteful to her, Elise had little cause to

complain of him: for seldom had any of the scores of young fellows who

followed in her train the good fortune of a minute's talk with her

alone; and Rutledge, oppressed by the result of their last meeting at

Senator DeVale's, unsatisfied with the empty nothings which passed for

conversation in the brief glimpses he had of her at formal gatherings,

and chilled by the coldness of her manner which had been oh, so

different in that halcyon summer when he had lost his heart to her, was

well content to stand further and further away from her in the crowd

that was always about her, and to worship in spirit the real Elise

Phillips unfettered by convention and unaffected by untoward incident.

He took what comfort he could from the fact that as yet no favoured one

appeared among Elise's admirers, and that among the sons of fortune,

army officers, attaches, and all that sort who aspired to make life

interesting for the President's eldest daughter it seemed none could

flatter himself he was preferred above another.

As for those who exhibited the liveliest interest in Elise, gossip gave

that distinction to two. One evening at a reception at Secretary

Mackenzie's Senator Rutledge was talking to Lola DeVale when Elise

passed, accompanied by a stalwart young fellow whom Rutledge had never

seen.

"Who is Sir Monocle?" he asked.

"Where?" asked Lola.

"Miss Phillips' escort."

"Oh. He has no monocle."

"I know. But he should have. He looks it. Who is he?"

"Captain George St. Lawrence Howard, second son of the Earl of

Duddeston. He was taking a look at America, but an introduction to

Elise seems to have persuaded him to limit his observations to

Washington City."

"Sensible fellow," commented Rutledge.

"Yes," said Lola, "and a very likable fellow. He won his captaincy with

Younghusband in the Thibetan campaign before he was twenty; and the fact

that an invalid brother is all that stands between him and the earldom

doesn't make him any the less interesting."

"Titles are talismanic--whether military or other. With two, he ought to

be fairly irresistible."

"Yes, and besides that he has plenty of money and leisure to make love

with a thorough care for detail."

"With all those and a manifest supremely good taste," said Rutledge, "I

would back him for a winner."

"You are forgetting Senatorial courtesy!"

"How now?"

"Senator Richland."

"What of him?"

"He also is in the running."

"Richland? I hadn't heard."

"Yes; and remember that his fortune is ten times that of the Earl of

Duddeston, and his brains are of the same grade as his bank account."

Rutledge was interested. He had a thorough respect for Richland's

ability.

"He is nearly twice Elise's age," Lola continued, "and Senatorial

dignity will not permit a display of violent enthusiasm. But Senator

Richland has acquired the habit of winning, and he is young enough and

abundantly able to make the game interesting both for Elise and for any

rivals. He is young indeed for his honours, has the ear of the people,

and is a politician of rare acumen. His followers predict for him

nothing less than the Presidency itself when his time is ripe. What

more could a girl wish? Don't lay all your salary on the

Englishman--you might lose."

* * * * *

Lola DeVale had not misread Senator Richland's purposes. He was

seriously in the running. Elise was the first woman he had ever thought

of marrying. She seemed to him to fit perfectly into all the plans which

his ambition had made for the future. He had met her at Mr. Phillips'

inauguration, and after thinking over her charms during the summer

vacation had come back to Washington in December fully determined to

wage a vigorous campaign for her hand.

Of the other men who were rash enough to dream of Elise it is needless

and would be tiresome to go into detail. They were more or less

interested, enamoured or devoted: but the Senator and Captain Howard

were too fast company for them, and they are of interest only as a

numerous field which made the running more or less difficult for the

leaders.

Evans Rutledge willingly would have entered the lists against Richland

or the Englishman--against anybody--if Elise had been ordinarily civil

to him; but he had been in such evident disfavour since the Smith

knock-down that he deemed himself one of "the gallery" at this game of

hearts. Elise when indeed she had time to think of it, felt that she

had dealt with him ungenerously if not unjustly, but that only made his

presence less grateful to her.

The unreasonableness of Elise's attitude toward Rutledge and Rutledge's

behaviour whenever she saw him near Elise, mildly stirred the womanly

curiosity of Lola DeVale to the point of investigation. She found Elise

averse to the slightest discussion of Senator Rutledge or of anything

connected with him. Baffled there, she turned with more determination

and softer skill to the man. He will never know how he came upon terms

of such friendliness and sympathy with Miss DeVale. Soon doubtless he

would have confided the story of his love to her. But events came about

differently.

A score of young people were at Senator DeVale's country-place one

evening in May. Elise had met Evans with something of her old-time

friendliness and he was in an uncertain state of happiness.

"Now don't make an ass of yourself because the Lady Beautiful is in a

mood to be gracious," he solemnly admonished his heart. "Sir Monocle

may just have proposed and been accepted."

The thought was as bracing as a cold shower and gave him a vigorous grip

on his rebellious affections. Then he danced with her--on the wide,

dimly lighted veranda--a slow, lotus-land waltz, just coming back in

vogue after more than a decade of galloping two-steps.

He took another grip on himself. He must not think of the woman in his

arms. Luckily the old-fashioned dance was diverting: while the movement

was intoxicating it was reminiscent. He remembered his first waltz--the

Carolina hill-town--the moonlight, the smell of the roses--the plump

little girl in the white dress, with the red, red sash, and the cheeks

as red, with the black eyes and the blacker hair, with the indefinable

sensuous physical perfume of Woman, and the very Spirit of the

Dance,--she who--yes, she who married the station-agent and was now such

a motherly person. He began a speech that would have been cynical.

Elise stopped him.

"Don't talk," she said. "Let's dream."

Tumult! Riot! What's the use to hold one's pulses steady when the Lady

Beautiful herself incites revolt!

"Let's dream." His heart-strings were set a-tremble by the vibrant

richness of her voice, which seemed to have caught the dreaminess and

rhythm and resonance of the violins that drew them on. And--

"Don't talk." No: he would not profane the enchantment of that waltz

with words; and yet surely My Lady Beautiful were heartless indeed not

to catch the messages of love which, pure of the alloy of breath and

speech, his every pulse-beat sent unfettered to her heart.

He held her for a moment after the violins had ceased, and the spell of

the slow-swinging waltz was still upon them both--when a quick jerk of

the fiddles in the ever rollicking two-step brought Sir Monocle to

Elise's side. Evans resigned her with a bow and, without so much as a

"thank you," went out on the lawn to commune with his heart.

How long that two-step continued, he, seated in a retired nook, did not

know. Sometime after it was finished he saw Elise and the Englishman

walk down the winding path that led from the front door to the roadside.

They stood talking together a minute perhaps till Captain Howard boarded

a passing car city-bound. Rutledge noted with a twinge of jealousy the

cordial good-bye the girl gave the man, but even at that distance and

through the uncertain light he thought he saw--and, queer to say,

resented--a certain formality in Captain Howard's adieus to the woman.

He watched her through the trees as she came slowly back up the hill

following the turns of the smooth hard walk as it wound through darkness

and half lights from the broad gateway to the house. She moved along, a

white shadow, slowly at first, and Evans imagined that she was in some

such mood as possessed him. Then she started suddenly and ran at a

stone stairway which mounted a terrace. She tripped, stumbled and fell

against the granite steps.

Rutledge was flying to her before she was fairly prone. He spoke to her

and tried to help her up. She made no answer, and her hand and arm were

limp.

"Elise!" he said, with fear in his voice. Still no answer.

He took her in his arms and made directly up the hill for the front

door.

"Elise," he whispered fearfully again. "Oh, my heart, speak to me!"

Her cheek was against his shoulder. He buried his face in her hair, as

he prayerfully kissed the snow-white part visible even in that darkness.

Her head dropped limply back, and a sigh came from her lips so close to

his. Still she answered not his call. He loved her very much and--he

kissed her again, softly, where the long lashes lay upon her cheek,

and--"Elise!" he murmured appealingly. She turned her face feebly away

from him, like a child restless in sleep.

He had not delayed his climb to the house.

"Here!" he cried. "Get Dr. Sheldon quick! Miss Phillips is dangerously

hurt!"

There were excited screams among the women and a stir among the men as

he carried his burden across the piazza and into the wide hall. There

in the full light he saw--Miss Elise Phillips talking quietly to Donald

MacLane. He almost let fall the woman in his arms. He looked again at

her face. She was Lola DeVale.

Dr. Sheldon and Lola's mother fortunately were at hand. At their

direction Rutledge carried the young woman up the stairs and laid her on

a couch in her sitting-room. She opened her eyes and smiled languidly

at him as he put her down.

Elise and all the other young people knew of Rutledge's mistake as to

Lola's identity, but Elise could not understand why he blushed so

furiously as he gave her an account of the mishap.

* * * * *

At her next _tete-a-tete_ with Rutledge Lola gave him her very sincerest

thanks and--laughed at him till he was uncomfortable. Finally she said:

"You are a very gallant but a very mercenary knight, Mr. Rutledge."

Rutledge was hopelessly confused.

Lola continued, mischief in her eyes: "Alas! the spirit of commercialism

has pervaded even Southern Chivalry, and forlorn maidens must pay as

they go." Rutledge was plainly resentful.

"Now I am very unselfish, Mr. Rutledge, and--I wish it _had_ been

Elise." Her mischief dissolved in a confiding smile, full of

sympathy,--and Rutledge was very humble.

Lola DeVale's sympathy was warm and irresistible, and before he was

aware he was telling her of his love for Elise in a way to set her

interest a-tingle.

"Why don't you tell her of it?" asked Lola. "Tell her that it just

overwhelms all earlier loves."

"Earlier loves? I never loved any other woman," Rutledge answered.

"Oh, of course not." Lola could scarcely repress a smile at the thought

that a man always swears only his last passion is genuine.

"But tell her--tell her!" she repeated.

"I have told her."

"When?"

"Three years ago."

"Plainly? or with artistic indirectness?"

"Plainly."

Lola looked at him incredulously, but saw that he was telling the truth.

"The sly thing!" she exclaimed under her breath. "But tell her _again_!

I declare if I were a man and loved Elise--and I would love none

else--I'd tell her so every time I saw her."

"Oh I'll not love another--no fear of that," Evans replied half lightly;

"but as for telling her again, self-respect will not--"

"Self-respect--fudge! If I loved a girl I'd tell her so a hundred

times--and marry her too--in spite of everything."

"Perhaps so," Evans commented skeptically.

Lola was shooting in the dark, but her warm heart would not let her

leave the matter at rest. Both because of her desire, being happily in

love herself, to see the love affairs of her friends go smoothly, and

because of the riddle it presented to her, she approached Elise again in

order to straighten out the tangled skein for everybody's satisfaction.

She thought to match her wits against Elise's and proceeded with more

caution.

"By the way, Elise," she said, apropos of nothing at all, "I think you

were right about Senator Rutledge's being very much in love with that

young woman you told me about."

Elise exhibited a perfect indifference and said nothing.

"I asked him about her, after becoming duly confidential and

sympathetic, of course, and he confirmed your statement. He still loves

the girl--oh, you ought to hear him tell of it. 'He will never love

another till he's dead, dead, dead,'--or words to that effect: but he

will not tell her--"

Elise was listening with a polite but languid interest.

"--again. He thinks his self-respect forbids; but _I_ think--"

"Did he say that? To you?" Elise demanded.

"Yes; when I asked h--"

"Well now, once and for all, Lola, I tell you I despise that man, and

never must you mention his name to me again!"

"But Elise, I think he--"

"Stop, Lola! I'll not hear another word!"

"But let me tell you, Elise. He--"

"No! Stop _now_! Not another word if you care for my friendship. I'll

never speak to you again if you speak of him to me!"

Elise's anger was at white heat, and she looked and spoke like her

father. Lola was frightened at her manner, but made another brave

attempt to set matters straight, which was met by such a blaze of

personal resentment in Elise's eyes that she gave up in abject

defeat--though she did pluck up courage to fire a parting shot.

"Very well, my dear," she said, as if dismissing the subject.... "I

have something of yours I must give you before I go. There--take it,"

and she kissed the expectant Elise warmly on the lips as she added:

"Senator Rutledge gave it to me by mistake as he carried me up the hill

the other night."

*CHAPTER XIX*

Lily Porter finally became conscious that she was the special attraction

for a stranger who regularly every other Sunday evening sat in a forward

pew and listened to her singing with attentive interest, but who showed

little or no care for any of the service beside. Several months had gone

by before she noticed him and his faithful attention to herself. When

she did realize his presence she was conscious that he had been paying

her this tribute for a long time. She observed him quietly and

satisfied herself that he came only to see or to hear her. He did not

force himself upon her vision, but none the less did she understand that

she was the chief object of his respectful consideration.

The preacher's manner and style of thought did not appeal to Hayward,

while Lily Porter's face and voice did. He always sat where he could

look at her in the choir-loft, for he argued that as he went only to see

her he would see as much of her as possible. His face was mobile and

easily read, and as he was good to look upon and so evidently

appreciative of her efforts the girl came ere long to sing with an eye

to his approval and admiration--to sing for him and to him. This

interested her for a time, but she was piqued at length for that he

seemed content to admire at a distance and made no effort to come nearer

to her.

One evening, unexpectedly to them both, a negro prominent among his race

because of his position as Registrar for the District, John K. Brown,

with whom Hayward had picked up a mutually agreeable though casual

acquaintance, introduced him to the singer in the aisle of the church.

"Miss Lily, I want to introduce my friend Mr. John Hayward, who goes

into extravagances about your singing--as he very properly should."

Hayward was overjoyed at his good fortune. To be presented as John

Brown's friend was a passport to the best negro society in Washington.

He was as much pleased to know that Brown regarded him so favourably as

he was delighted to meet the young woman. As he walked with her to the

door she presented him to her mother, a bright mulatto woman about fifty

or more, who did the grand dame to the best of her ability: which was

indeed perfect as to manner but was betrayed the moment she tried to do

too many things with the English language.

When he had opportunity Hayward was profuse in his thanks to Brown, and

told him volubly of his love for music. Finding a sympathetic listener,

he was led on to an impulsive story of the social longings and lackings

in his life. Brown, more than ever impressed with the young fellow's

intelligence and worthiness, was at some pains thereafter to look after

him and set him going in a congenial social current.

With Brown's approval and his own gifts and graces it was not remarkable

that Hayward won his way to social popularity as fast as his confining

duties would permit. He began to see much of Lily Porter and was

consistent in his devotion to her despite the fact that the habit of his

college days of being attracted by each new and pretty face still

measurably clung to him. His information and accomplishments were of a

sort superior to that of any of the young women he met, and none made a

serious impression on his heart. Lily Porter was more nearly his equal

in education and general cultivation of mind and manner, and was really

the most attractive to him; but his harmless vanity could not forego the

admiration of the others, and he gave some little time to small

conquests. He did homage to Lily by his evident admiration of her

talents and comeliness and by his unconcealed pleasure in her

friendship. At the same time he met her petty tyrannies and autocratic

demands with an unmoved indifference.

He had become very well acquainted with Lily and had called on her

several times before Henry Porter knew that his daughter was receiving

the footman whom he had snubbed some months before.

"Lily, who was that young man that called on you last night?"

"Mr. Hayward."

"Umhuh, I thought he was the same fellow. You'll have to drop him. I

don't want you to be receivin' no footman in this house. We must draw

the line somewhere."

"He's no footman, papa. He's one of Mr. Brown's friends. Mr. Brown

introduced him to me himself. I think he is connected with Mr. Brown's

office."

"No such thing. Hayward's footman at the White House--told me so

hisself 'bout a year ago, and I saw him on the President's carriage no

longer'n yesterday. Nice lie he's told you 'bout bein' in Brown's

office."

"Oh, he didn't say so, papa. I supposed so because Mr. Brown said he

was his friend and has introduced him to all the nice people. Surely

you can't object to one of Mr. Brown's friends. Everybody likes Mr.

Hayward and he is received everywhere."

"Everybody likes him, do they? Well you see to it you don't like him

any too much. I can't kick him out if Brown stands for him, but you

make it your business to let him down easy. Have you seen Bob Shaw

lately?"

"He was here last night when Mr. Hayward came," answered Lily; and she

seemed to be amused at something.

"Well, what's funny 'bout that?"

Lily knew that she must not tell her father what she was laughing at.

She created a diversion.

"Mr. Shaw is so backward, and so--dark."

"Dark! He's jus' a good hones' black,--so'm I--all African and proud of

it. Mebbe I'm too dark to suit yuh. Bob Shaw is not backward, miss.

He's got the bes' law practice of all the niggers in the Distric', and

he'll be leader of the whole crowd in a few years. He's the bes' one in

the bunch of these fellers who tag after you and you better take him.

My money and his brains and pull with the party 'd make a great

combernation."

Lily did not commit herself. She was accustomed to her father's blunt

method of indicating his wishes. She liked Shaw well enough, but old

Henry's awkward interference and zeal did the lawyer's cause no good.

Shaw was below the ordinary in the matter of good looks, and in his love

for Lily was too submissive to her whims. He had not Hayward's easy

manner, nor his assurance--for the footman was not at all abashed by

Henry Porter's money nor his daughter's gentle arrogance. It is

needless to say the girl preferred the serving-man to the lawyer.

After the first flush of interest in Lily and her songs had subsided

Hayward made love to the pampered belle warmly or indifferently as the

mood was upon him. He noted that, taking her charms in detail, they

were alluring without exception; and such moments of reflective analysis

were always followed by a more determined pursuit of her. Yet the

careless moods came. However, he always delighted in and could be

extravagant in praising her singing, even when the personal attraction

was the weakest, and the general effect on the woman was a continuous

tattoo of love-taps at the door of her heart.

The negro magnate's favourite, Shaw, clearly was being outdistanced, and

the outraged father stamped and threatened and commanded: but to no

purpose. When Hayward discovered the bitterness of the old man's

opposition he chuckled.

"Here's where I get even," he said; and became more assiduous in his

attentions to Lily and more aggressive in his methods.

"Your father does not appear to hold much love for me," he told Lily one

evening after she had sung him into an affectionate frame of mind and

the conversation had drifted along to the confidential and personal

stage.

"Did I ever tell you what he did with my first request for an

introduction to you?"

"No. What?"

"He stamped the feathers off of it," said Hayward, and laughingly told

her the details.

"Papa thinks--everybody--should be a lawyer, or a politician with a

pull," Lily commented complainingly.

The temptation to vindicate his dignity was too much for Hayward.

"I was not always a footman and do not intend always to be a footman;

and yet, footman as I am, if your father values a pull with the

President, perhaps, if he knew--oh, well, he might think better of me."

"Oh, you have a pull? How interesting. Do tell me about it. I have

read so much about pulls that I am dying to know what one is like. How

do you work it? I believe you work a pull, don't you? Or do you pull

the--"

"I haven't pulled mine yet. I'm waiting," said Hayward. "But it will

work when the time comes."

"And when will the time come? Tell me. I'm so anxious to see the

wheels go round in a genuine political machine. How many Southern

delegates can you influence in the next national convention? That's the

mainspring, isn't it?"

"I'm no politician or vote vender. I've never had the pleasure of

influencing my own vote yet, and won't as long as I live in the

District."

"What! Without politics or votes, and yet you have a pull?"

"It is a personal matter entirely," Hayward answered carelessly, as if

personal friendships with Presidents were very ordinary affairs for him.

Lily Porter was a mite skeptical, but she hoped he spoke the truth, for

it would more than confirm her estimate of him and would be such an

effective counter to her father's nagging opposition.

"Oh, isn't that interesting! Tell me all about it!"

"Really I cannot. I have never told that, even to my mother. There is

only one other person who knows of it. It is my one secret, and my

life--that is, my future--depends largely upon it. There's too much at

stake."

"Would you fear to trust your life--your future--in my hands?" asked the

woman softly. "I could be a very good and a very faithful friend."

The lure in her voice was irresistible.

"I would trust my soul with you," he answered, and with the spoken faith

the trust was perfected in his heart. "Listen."

He told her all about himself, of his name and his history, of his life

and his hopes. He was modest in his recital of the creditable things he

had done; but when he had told her of his claim upon the President's

gratitude and the purpose toward which he would use it, and began to

talk of his ambition and his dreams, his heart was fired by its own

fervour, and before the very warmth of his own eloquence all obstacles

and difficulties faded as mists before the sun, and he felt that he

needed only to put forth his hands to grasp his heart's desires.

The girl was touched with his fire. She listened with ready sympathy to

the beginning of his story, heard with quickening pulses of his rescue

of Colonel Phillips, and in the telling of his hopes was caught in the

current of his transporting fervency and carried along with him to

realize the vision of his martial career.

"And that is the picture of your life! It is--it will be--glorious!"

She rose in her enthusiasm. "Oh, that a woman might--"

"Glorious--yes," the man said; "and till to-night it had seemed perfect

to me. But I have been blind to its greatest lack. You have made me

conscious of it." Hayward stood up and moved toward the girl, who

wavered uncertainly between reserve and complaisance.

"I would paint another figure into that picture, Lily--the figure of a

woman." He put his hands out toward her, and her coldness was melting

when--"Lily," said her father from the hall, "what did you do with the

evenin' paper? I want to read Mr. Shaw's speech before the convention

this mornin'. Mr. Brown told me that it is the greates' speech that's

been made yet."

Henry Porter came into the parlour in time to catch a glimpse of

confusion and unusual attitude in his daughter and Hayward. He thought

best to mount guard, and decided to talk Hayward into flight. He began

with a panegyric on Shaw. Hayward caught the hint and took his leave,

pulling Lily to the front door by a chain of conversation.

"Now remember," he murmured tenderly, "you hold my secret; and must keep

it sacredly."

"Have no fear of me. Watch your other confidante," Lily whispered, her

manner full as his of tenderness.

"Oh, she is--"

"Shaw told 'em," began the persistent and suspicious parent, coming out

of the parlour;--but the footman was gone down the steps.

Hayward's mood changed in a twinkling and with a jolt. He walked a

hundred paces thinking confusedly.