A SNAKE IN THE GRASS
Usually in the story of a man's life, or in fiction, when he gets the
girl's consent to marry, first admitting the love, the story ends; but
with mine it was much to the contrary. The story did not end there, nor
when we had married that afternoon at two o'clock. Instead, my marriage
brought the change in my life which was the indirect cause of my writing
this story. From that time adventures were numerous. We arrived in
Megory several hours late and remained over night at a hotel, going to
the farm the next morning and then to the house I had rented
temporarily.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I looked over the fields, and saw that
the boy I hired had done nicely with the work during my absence. The
next night about sixty of the white neighbors gave us a charivari and my
wife was much pleased to know there was no color prejudice among them.
We purchased about a hundred dollars worth of furniture in the town and
at once began housekeeping. My bride didn't know much about cooking, but
otherwise was a good housekeeper, and willing to learn all she could.
She was not a forceful person and could not be hurried, but was kind and
good as could be, and I soon became very fond of her and found marriage
much of an improvement over living alone.
In May we went up to her claim and put up a sod house and stayed there
awhile, later returning to Megory county to look after the crops. Our
first trouble occurred in about a month. I was still rather angry over
the Reverend's obliging me to spend the money to go to Chicago. This had
cost me a hundred dollars which I needed badly to pay the interest on my
loan. Letters began coming from the company holding the mortgages,
besides I had other obligations pending. I had only fifty dollars in the
bank when I started to Chicago and while there drew checks on it for
fifty more, making an overdraft of fifty dollars which it took me a
month to get paid after returning home. The furniture required for
housekeeping and improvements in connection with the homesteads took
more money, and my sister went home to attend the graduation of another
sister and I was required to pay the bills. My corn was gathered and I
now shelled it. As the price in Megory was only forty cents at the
elevators I hauled it to Victor, where I received seventy and sometimes
seventy-five cents for it, but as it was thirty-five miles, that took
time and the long drive was hard on the horses. Orlean's folks kept
writing letters telling her she must send money to buy something they
thought nice for her to have, and while no doubt not intending to cause
any trouble, they made it very hard for me. Money matters are usually a
source of trouble to the lives of newly-weds and business is so
cold-blooded that it contrasts severely with love's young dream.
My position was a trying one for the reason that all the relatives on
both sides seemed to take it for granted that I should have plenty of
money, and nothing I could say or do seemed to change matters. From his
circuit the Reverend wrote glowing letters to his "daughter and son," of
what all the people were saying. Everybody thought she had married so
well; Mr. Devereaux, or Oscar, as they put it, was of good family, a
successful young man, and was rich. I hadn't written to him and called
him "dear father." Perhaps this is what I should have done. In a way it
would have been easy enough to write, and since my marriage I had no
letters to spend hours in writing. Perhaps I should have written to him,
but when a man is in the position I faced, debts on one side and
relatives on the other, I thought it would not do to write as I felt,
and I could not write otherwise and play the hypocrite, as I had not
liked him from the beginning, and now disliked him still more because I
could find no way of letting him know how I felt. This was no doubt
foolish, but it was the way I felt about it at the time. My
father-in-law evidently thought me ungrateful, and wrote Orlean that I
should write him or the folks at home occasionally, but I remained
obdurate. I felt sure he expected me to feel flattered over the opinions
of which he had written in regard to my being considered rich, but I did
not want to be considered rich, for I was not. I had never been vain,
and hating flattery, I wanted to tell her people the truth. I wanted
them to understand, if they did not, what it took to make good in this
western country, and that I had a load and wanted their encouragement
and invited criticism, not empty praise and flattery.
Before I had any colored people to discourage me with their ignorance of
business or what is required for success, I was stimulated to effort by
the example of my white neighbors and friends who were doing what I
admired, building an empire; and to me that was the big idea. Their
parents before them knew something of business and this knowledge was a
goodly heritage. If they could not help their children with money they
at least gave their moral support and visited them and encouraged them
with kind words of hope and cheer. The people in a new country live
mostly on hopes for the first five or ten years. My parents and
grandparents had been slaves, honest, but ignorant. My father could
neither read nor write, had not succeeded in a large way, and had
nothing to give me as a start, not even practical knowledge. My wife's
parents were a little different, but it would have been better for me
had her father been other than "the big preacher" as he was referred to,
who in order to be at peace with, it was necessary to praise.
What I wanted in the circumstances I now faced was to be allowed to
mould my wife into a practical woman who would be a help in the work we
had before us, and some day, I assured her, we would be well to do, and
then we could have the better things of life.
"How long?" She would ask, weeping. She was always crying and so many
tears got on my nerves, especially when my creditors were pestering me
with duns, and it is Hades to be dunned, especially when you have not
been used to it.
"Oh!" I'd say. "Five or ten years."
And then she'd have another cry, and I would have to do a lot of petting
and persuading to keep her from telling her mother. This all had a
tendency to make me cross and I began to neglect kissing her as much as
I had been doing, but she was good and had been a nice girl when I
married her. She could only be made to stop crying when I would spend an
hour or two petting and assuring her I still loved her, and this when I
should have been in the fields. She would ask me a dozen times a day
whether I still loved her, or was I growing tired of her so soon. She
was a veritable clinging vine. This continued until we were both
decidedly unhappy and then began ugly little quarrels, but when she
would be away with my sister to her claim in Tipp county I would be so
lonesome without her, simple as I thought she was, and days seemed like
weeks.
One day she was late in bringing my dinner to the field where I was
plowing, and we had a quarrel which made us both so miserable and
unhappy that we were ashamed of ourselves. By some power for which we
were neither responsible, our disagreements came to an end and we never
quarreled again.
The first two weeks in June were hot and dry, and considerable damage
was done to the crops in Tipp county and in Megory county also. The
winds blew from the south and became so hot the young green plants began
to fire, but a big rain on the twenty-fourth saved the crops in Megory
county. About that time the Reverend wrote that he would come to see us
after conference, which was then three months away.
One day we were going to town after our little quarrels were over, and I
talked kindly with Orlean about her father and tried to overcome my
dislike of him, for her sake. I had learned by that time just how she
had been raised, and that was to to praise her father. She would say:
"You know, papa is such a big man," or "He is so great."
She had begun to call me her great and big husband, and I think that had
been the cause of part of our quarrels for I had discouraged it. I had a
horror of praise when I thought how silly her father was over it, and
she had about ceased and now talked more sensibly, weighing matters and
helping me a little mentally.
We talked of her father and his expected visit. She appeared so pleased
over the prospect and said:
"Won't he make a hit up here? Won't these white people be foolish over
his fine looks and that beautiful white hair?" And she raised her hands
and drew them back as I had seen her do in stroking her father's hair.
I agreed with her that he would attract some attention and changed the
subject. When we returned home she gave me the letter to read that she
had written to him. She was obedient and did try so hard to please me,
and when I read in the letter she had written that we had been to town
and had talked about him all the way and were anxious for him to visit
us; that we had agreed that he would make a great impression with the
people out here, I wanted very much to tell her not to send that letter
as it placed me in a false light, and would cause him to think the
people were going to be crazy about him and his distinguished
appearance; but she was watching me so closely that I could not be mean
enough to speak my mind and did not offer my usual criticism.
A short time before her father arrived, a contest was filed against
Orlean's claim on the ground that she had never established a residence.
We had established residence, but by staying much of the time in Megory
county had laid the claim liable to contest. The man who filed the
contest was a banker in Amro, this bank being one of the few buildings
left there. I knew we were in for a big expense and lots of trouble,
which I had feared, and had been working early and late to get through
my work in Megory county and get onto her claim permanently.
We did not receive the Reverend's letter stating when he would arrive so
I was not at the train to meet him, but happened to be in town on horse
back. In answer to my inquiries, a man who had come in on the train gave
me a description of a colored man who had arrived on the same train, and
I knew that my father-in-law was in town. I went to the hotel and found
he had left his baggage but had gone to the restaurant, where I found
him. He seemed pleased to be in Megory and after I explained that I had
not received his letter, I went to look up a German neighbor who was in
town in a buggy, thinking I would have the Reverend ride out with him.
When we got ready to go the German was so drunk and noisy that the
Reverend was frightened and remarked cautiously that he did not know
whether he wanted to ride out with a drunken man or not. The German
heard him and roared in a still louder tone:
"You don't have to ride with me. Naw! Naw! Naw!"
The elder became more frightened at this and hurriedly ducked into the
hotel, where he stayed. I hitched a team of young mules to the wagon the
next morning and sent Orlean to town after him.
The Reverend seemed to be carried away with our lives on the Little
Crow, and we got along fine until he and I got to arguing the race
question, which brought about friction. It was as I had feared but it
seemed impossible to avoid it. He had the most ancient and backward
ideas concerning race advancement I had ever heard. He was filled to
overflowing with condemnation of the white race and eulogy of the negro.
In his idea the negro had no fault, nor could he do any wrong or make
any mistake. Everything had been against him and according to the
Reverend's idea, was still. This he would declare very loudly. From the
race question we drifted to the discussion of mixed schools.
The Reverend had educated his girls with the intention of making
teachers of them and would speak of this fact with much pride, speaking
slowly and distinctly like one who has had years of oratory. He would
insist that the public schools of Chicago have not given them a chance.
"I am opposed to mixed schools," he would exclaim. "They are like
everything else the white people control. They are managed in a way to
keep the colored people down."
Here Orlean dissented, this being about the only time she did openly
disagree with him. She was firm in declaring there was no law or
management preventing the colored girls' teaching in Chicago if they
were competent.
"In the first place," she carefully continued, "the school we attended
in Ohio does not admit to teach in the city."
In order to teach in the city schools it is either necessary to be a
graduate of the normal, or have had a certain number of years'
experience elsewhere. I do not remember all the whys, but she was
emphatic and continued to insist that it was to some extent the fault of
the girls, who were not all as attentive to books as they should be;
spending too much time in society or with something else that kept them
from their studies, which impaired their chances when they attempted to
enter the city schools.
She held up instances where colored girls were teaching in Chicago
schools and had been for years, which knocked the foundation from his
argument.
There are very few colored people in a city or state which has mixed
schools, who desire to have them separated. The mixed schools give the
colored children a more equal opportunity and all the advantage of
efficient management. Separate schools lack this. Even in the large
cities, where separate schools are in force, the advantage is invariably
with the white schools.
Another advantage of mixed schools is, it helps to eliminate so much
prejudice. Many ignorant colored people, as well as many ignorant white
people, fill their children's minds with undue prejudice against each
race. If they are kept in separate schools this line becomes more
distinct, with one colored child filling the mind of other colored
children with bad ideas, and the white child doing likewise, which is
never helpful to the community. By nature, in the past at least, the
colored children were more ferocious and aggressive; too much so, which
is because they have not been out of heathenism many years. The mixed
school helps to eliminate this tendency.
With the Reverend it was a self-evident fact, that the only thing he
cared about was that it would be easier for the colored girls to teach,
if the schools were separate. I was becoming more and more convinced
that he belonged to the class of the negro race that desires ease,
privilege, freedom, position, and luxury without any great material
effort on their part to acquire it, and still held to the time-worn cry
of "no opportunity."
Following this disagreement came another. I had always approved of
Booker T. Washington, his life and his work in the uplift of the negro.
Before his name was mentioned I had decided just about how he would take
it, and I was not mistaken. He was bitterly opposed to the educator.