What next? was the question Mr. Thomas was revolving in his mind, when a
knock was heard at his door, and he saw standing on the threshold, one
of his former pupils.
"Well, Charley, how does the world use you? Everything going on
swimmingly?"
"Oh, no indeed. I have lost my situation."
"How is that? You were getting on so well. Mr. Hazleton seemed to be
perfectly satisfied with you, and I thought that you were quite a
favorite in the establishment. How was it that you lost your place?"
"I lost it through the meanness of Mr. Mahler."
"Mr. Mahler, our Superintendent of public schools?"
"Yes, it was through him that I lost my situation."
"Why, what could you have done to offend him?"
"Nothing at all; I never had an unpleasant word with him in my life."
"Do explain yourself. I cannot see why he should have used any influence
to deprive you of your situation."
"He had it in his power to do me a mean, low-life trick, and he did it,
and I hope to see the day when I will be even with him," said the lad,
with a flashing eye, while an angry flush mantled his cheek.
"Do any of the family deal at Mr. Hazleton's store? Perhaps you gave
some of them offence through neglect or thoughtlessness in dealing with
them."
"It was nothing of the kind. Mr. Mahler knew me and my mother. He knew
her because she taught under him, and of course saw me often enough to
know that I was her son, and so last week when he saw me in the store, I
noticed that he looked very closely at me, and that in a few moments
after he was in conversation with Mr. Hazleton. He asked him, 'if he
employed a nigger for a cashier?' He replied, 'Of course not.' 'Well,'
he said, 'you have one now.' After that they came down to the desk where
I was casting up my accounts and Mr. Mahler asked, 'Is Mrs. Cooper your
mother?' I answered, 'yes sir.' Of course I would not deny my mother.
'Isn't your name Charley?'[8] and again I answered, yes; I could have
resorted to concealment, but I would not lie for a piece of bread, and
yet for mother's sake I sorely needed the place.
"What did Mr. Hazleton say?"
"Nothing, only I thought he looked at me a little embarrassed, just as
any half-decent man might when he was about to do a mean and cruel
thing. But that afternoon I lost my place. Mr. Hazleton said to me when
the store was about to close, that he had no further use for me. Not
discouraged, I found another place; but I believe that my evil genius
found me out and that through him I was again ousted from that situation
and now I am at my wits end."
"But, Charley, were you not sailing under false colors?"
"I do not think so, Mr. Thompson. I saw in the window an advertisement,
'A boy wanted.' They did not say what color the boy must be and I
applied for the situation and did my work as faithfully as I knew how.
Mr. Hazleton seemed to be perfectly satisfied with my work and as he did
not seek to know the antecedents of my family I did not see fit to
thrust them gratuitously upon him. You know the hard struggle my poor
mother has had to get along, how the saloon has cursed and darkened our
home and I was glad to get anything to do by which I could honestly earn
a dollar and help her keep the wolf from the door, and I tried to do my
level best, but it made no difference; as soon as it was known that I
had Negro blood in my veins door after door was closed against me; not
that I was not honest, industrious, obliging and steady, but simply
because of the blood in my veins."
"I admit," said Mr. Thomas, trying to repress his indignation and speak
calmly, "that it was a hard thing to be treated so for a cause over
which you had not the least control, but, Charley, you must try to pick
up courage."
"Oh, it seems to me that my courage has all oozed out. I think that I
will go away; maybe I can find work somewhere else. Had I been a convict
from a prison there are Christian women here who would have been glad to
have reached me out a helping hand and hailed my return to a life of
honest industry as a blessed crowning of their labors of love; while I,
who am neither a pauper nor felon, am turned from place after place
because I belong to a race on whom Christendom bestowed the curse of
slavery and under whose shadow has flourished Christless and inhuman
caste prejudice. So I think that I had better go and start life afresh."
"No, Charley, don't go away. I know you could pass as a white man; but,
Charley, don't you know that to do so you must separate from your
kindred and virtually ignore your mother? A mother, who, for your sake,
would, I believe, take blood from every vein and strength from every
nerve if it were necessary. If you pass into the white basis your mother
can never be a guest in your home without betraying your origin; you
cannot visit her openly and crown her with the respect she so well
deserves without divulging the secret of your birth; and Charley, by
doing so I do not think it possible that however rich or strong or
influential you may be as a white man, that you can be as noble and as
true a man as you will be if you stand in your lot without compromise or
concealment, and feel that the feebler your mother's race is the closer
you will cling to it. Charley, you have lately joined the church; your
mission in the world is not to seek to be rich and strong, but because
there is so much sin and misery in the world by it is to clasp the hand
of Christ through faith and try to make the world better by your
influence and gladder and brighter by your presence."
"Mr. Thomas I try to be, and I hope I am a Christian, but if these
prejudices are consistent with Christianity then I must confess that I
do not understand it, and if it is I do not want it. Are these people
Christians who open the doors of charitable institutions to sinners who
are white and close them against the same class who are black? I do not
call such people good patriots, let alone clear-sighted Christians. Why,
they act as if God had done wrong in making a man black, and that they
have never forgiven him and had become reconciled to the workmanship of
his hands."
"Charley, you are excited just now, and I think that you are making the
same mistake that better educated men than you have done. You are
putting Christianity and its abuses together. I do think, notwithstanding
all its perversions, and all the rubbish which has gathered around its
simplicity and beauty, that Christianity is the world's best religion.
I know that Christ has been wounded in what should have been the house
of his friends; that the banner of his religion which is broad enough
to float over the wide world with all its sin and misery, has been
drenched with the blood of persecution, trampled in the mire of slavery
and stained by the dust of caste proscription; but I believe that men
are beginning more fully to comprehend the claims of the gospel of
Jesus Christ. I am not afraid of what men call infidelity. I hold the
faith which I profess, to be too true, too sacred and precious to be
disturbed by every wave of wind and doubt. Amid all the religious
upheavals of the Nineteenth Century, I believe God is at the helm, that
there are petrifactions of creed and dogma that are to [be] broken up,
not by mere intellectual speculations, but by the greater solvent of
the constraining love of Christ, and it is for this that I am praying,
longing and waiting. Let schoolmen dispute and contend, the faith for
which I most ardently long and earnestly contend, is a faith which works
by love and purifies the soul."
"Mr. Thomas, I believe that there is something real about your religion,
but some of these white Christians do puzzle me awfully. Oh, I think
that I will go. I am sick and tired of the place. Everything seems to be
against me."
"No, Charley; stay for your mother's sake. I know a noble and generous
man who is brave enough to face a vitiated public opinion, and rich
enough to afford himself the luxury of a good conscience. I shall tell
him your story and try to interest him in your behalf. Will you stay?"
"I certainly will if he will give me any chance to get my living and
help my mother."
"It has been said that everything has two handles, and if you take it by
the wrong handle it will be too hard to hold."
"I should like to know which is the right handle to this prejudice
against color."
"I do not think that there is prejudice against color in this country."
"No prejudice against color!" said Charley Cooper,[9] opening his eyes
with sudden wonder. "What was it that dogged my steps and shut door
after door against me? Wasn't that prejudice against color?"
"Whose color, Charley? Surely not yours, for you are whiter than several
of Mr. Hazleton's clerks. Do you see in your case it was not prejudice
against color?"
"What was it, then?"
"It was the information that you were connected by blood with a once
enslaved and despised people on whom society had placed its ban, and to
whom slavery and a low social condition had given a heritage of scorn,
and as soon as he found out that you were connected with that race, he
had neither the manliness nor the moral courage to say, the boy is
capable and efficient. I see no cause why he should be dismissed for the
crimes of his white ancestors. I heard an eminent speaker once say that
some people would sing, 'I can smile at Satan's rage, and face a
frowning world,' when they hadn't courage enough to face their next door
neighbor on a moral question."
"I think that must be the case with Mr. Hazleton."
"I once used to despise such men. I have since learned to pity them."
"I don't see what you find to pity in Mr. Hazleton, unless it is his
meanness."
"Well, I pity him for that. I think there never was slave more cowed
under the whip of his master than he is under the lash of public
opinion. The Negro was not the only one whom slavery subdued to the
pliancy of submission. Men fettered the slave and cramped their own
souls, denied him knowledge and then darkened their own spiritual
insight, and the Negro, poor and despised as he was, laid his hands upon
American civilization and has helped to mould its character. It is God's
law. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, and men cannot sow avarice and
oppression without reaping the harvest of retribution. It is a dangerous
thing to gather
The flowers of sin that blossom
Around the borders of hell."