"Annette," said Mrs. Harcourt one morning early, "I want you to stir
your stumps to-day; I am going to have company this evening and I want
you to help me to get everything in apple pie order."
"Who is coming, grandma?"
"Mr. Thomas and Mrs. Lasette."
"Mrs. Lasette!" Annette's eyes brightened. "I hope she will come; she is
just as sweet as a peach and I do love her ever so much; and who else?"
"Brother Lomax, the minister who preached last Sunday and gave us such a
good sermon."
"Is he coming, too?" Annette opened her eyes with pleased surprise. "Oh,
I hope he will come, he's so nice."
"What do you know about him?"
"Why, grandmother, I understood everything that he said, and I felt that
I wanted to be good just like he told us, and I went and asked aunt
'Liza how people got religion. She had been to camp-meeting and seen
people getting religion, and I wanted her to tell me all about it for I
wanted to get it too."
"What did she tell you?"
"She told me that people went down to the mourner's bench and prayed and
then they would get up and shout and say they had religion, and that was
all she knew about it."
"You went to the wrong one when you went to your aunt 'Liza. And what
did you do after she told you?"
"Why, I went down in the garden and prayed and I got up and shouted, but
I didn't get any religion. I guess I didn't try right."
"I guess you didn't if I judge by your actions. When you get older you
will know more about it."
"But, grandma, Aunt 'Liza is older than I am, why don't she know?"
"Because she don't try; she's got her head too full of dress and dancing
and nonsense."
Grandmother Harcourt did not have very much faith in what she called
children's religion, and here was a human soul crying out in the
darkness; but she did not understand the cry, nor look for the
"perfecting of praise out of the mouths of babes and sucklings," not
discerning the emotions of that young spirit, she let the opportunity
slip for rightly impressing that young soul. She depended too much on
the church and too little on the training of the home. For while the
church can teach and the school instruct, the home is the place to train
innocent and impressible childhood for useful citizenship on earth and a
hope of holy companionship in heaven; and every Christian should strive
to have "her one of the provinces of God's kingdom," where she can plant
her strongest batteries against the ramparts of folly, sin and vice.
"Who else is coming, grandma?"
"Why, of course I must invite Mrs. Larkins; it would never do to leave
her out."
Annette shrugged her shoulders, a scowl came over her face and she said:
"I hope she won't come."
"I expect she will and when she comes I want you to behave yourself and
don't roll up your eyes at her and giggle at her and make ugly speeches.
She told me that you made mouths at her yesterday, and that when Mr.
Ross was whipping his horse you said you knew some one whom you wished
was getting that beating, and she said that she just believed you meant
her. How was that, Annette? If I were like you I would be all the time
keeping this neighborhood in hot water."
Annette looked rather crestfallen and said, "I did make mouths at her
house as I came by, but I didn't know that she saw me."
"Yes she did, and you had better mind how you cut your cards with her."
Annette finding the conversation was taking a rather disagreeable turn
suddenly remembered that she had something to do in the yard and ceased
to prolong the dialogue. If the truth must be confessed, Annette was not
a very earnest candidate for saintship, and annoying her next door
neighbor was one of her favorite amusements.
Grandma Harcourt lived in a secluded court, which was shut in on every
side but one from the main streets, and her environments were not of the
most pleasant and congenial kind. The neighbors, generally speaking,
belonged to neither the best nor worst class of colored people. The
court was too fully enclosed to be a thoroughfare of travel, but it was
a place in which women could sit at their doors and talk to one another
from each side of the court. Women who had no scruples about drinking as
much beer, and sometimes stronger drinks, as they could absorb, and some
of the men said that the women drank more than men, and under the
besotting influence of beer and even stronger drinks, a fearful amount
of gossiping, news-carrying and tattling went on, which often resulted
in quarrels and contentions, which, while it never resulted in blood,
sadly lowered the tone of social life. It was the arena of wordy strife
in which angry tongues were the only weapons of warfare, and poor little
Annette was fast learning their modes of battle. But there was one thing
against which grandmother Harcourt set her face like flint, and that was
sending children to saloons for beer, and once she flamed out with
righteous indignation when one of her neighbors, in her absence, sent
Annette to a saloon to buy her some beer. She told her in emphatic terms
she must never do so again, that she wanted her girl to grow up a
respectable woman, and that she ought to be ashamed of herself, not only
to be guzzling beer like a toper, but to send anybody's child to a
saloon to come in contact with the kind of men who frequented such
places, and that any women who sent their children to such places were
training their boys to be drunkards and their girls to be
street-walkers. "I am poor," she said, "but I mean to keep my credit up
and if you and I live in this neighborhood a hundred years you must
never do that thing again."
Her neighbor looked dazed and tried to stammer out an apology, but she
never sent Annette to a beer saloon again, and in course of time she
became a good temperance woman herself, influenced by the faithfulness
of grandmother Harcourt.
The court in which Mrs. Harcourt lived was not a very desirable place,
but, on account of her color, eligible houses could not always be
obtained, and however decent, quiet or respectable she might appear on
applying for a house, she was often met with the rebuff, "We don't rent
to colored people," and men who virtually assigned her race the lowest
place and humblest positions could talk so glibly of the degradation of
the Negro while by their Christless and inhuman prejudice they were
helping add to their low social condition. In the midst of her
unfavorable environments Mrs. Harcourt kept her home neat and tidy; sent
Annette to school constantly and tried to keep her out of mischief, but
there was moral contagion in the social atmosphere of Tennis Court and
Annette too often succumbed to its influence; but Annette was young and
liked the company of young girls and it seemed cruel to confine the
child's whole life to the home and schoolhouse and give her no chance to
be merry and playful with girls of her own age. So now and then
grandmother Harcourt would let her spend a little time with some of the
neighbors' girls but from the questions that Annette often asked her
grandmother and the conversations she sometimes repeated Mrs. Harcourt
feared that she was learning things which should only be taught by
faithful mothers in hours of sacred and tender confidence, and she
determined, even if it gave offence to her neighbors, that she would
choose among her own friends, companions for her granddaughter and not
leave all her social future to chance. In this she was heartily aided by
Mrs. Lasette, who made it a point to hold in that neighborhood, mothers'
meetings and try to teach mothers, who in the dark days of slavery had
no bolts nor bars strong enough to keep out the invader from scattering
their children like leaves in wintry weather, how to build up light and
happy homes under the new dispensation of freedom. To her it was a
labor of love and she found her reward in the peace and love which
flowed into the soul and the improved condition of society. In lowly
homes where she visited, her presence was a benediction and an
inspiration. Women careless in their household and slatternly in their
dress grew more careful in the keeping of their homes and the
arrangement of their attire. Women of the better class of their own
race, coming among them awakened their self-respect. Prejudice and pride
of race had separated them from their white neighbors and the more
cultured of their race had shrunk from them in their ignorance, poverty
and low social condition and they were left, in a great measure, to
themselves--ostracised by the whites on the one side and socially
isolated from the more cultured of their race on the other hand. The law
took little or no cognizance of them unless they were presented at its
bar as criminals; but if they were neither criminals nor paupers they
might fester in their vices and perpetuate their social condition. Who
understood or cared to minister to their deepest needs or greatest
wants? It was just here where the tender, thoughtful love of a
warm-hearted and intelligent woman was needed. To her it was a labor of
love, but it was not all fair sailing. She sometimes met with coldness
and distrust where she had expected kindness and confidence; lack of
sympathy where she had hoped to find ready and willing cooperation; but
she knew that if her life was in harmony with God and Christly sympathy
with man; for such a life there was no such word as fail.