or imply that his martyrdom shortened the distance across the bloody
chasm or that his coffin nearly filled it. Reconstruction, Ku Klux, and
carpet-baggery lasted through Grant’s second term, except in so far as
it was put down (in Texas and Arkansas) despite the Republican party.
The South did not get any real relief until Hayes came in, and then
only as the result of a bargain made before the vote of the Electoral
Commission was taken.
To sum up: I think that you have dwelt too much on the humorous side
of the Cincinnati Convention, and that you have omitted the only
features that gave it a _raison d’être_, or have given such slight
attention to them that the reader will not catch their significance.
IS THE NEGRO HAVING A FAIR CHANCE?
BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
If I were asked the simple, direct question, “Does the negro in America
have a fair chance?” it would be easy to answer simply, “No,” and
then refer to instances with which every one is familiar to justify
this reply. Such a statement would, however, be misleading to any one
who was not intimately acquainted with the actual situation. For that
reason I have chosen to make my answer not less candid and direct, I
hope, but a little more circumstantial.
THE NEGRO TREATED BETTER IN AMERICA THAN ELSEWHERE
Although I have never visited either Africa or the West Indies to see
for myself the condition of the people in these countries, I have had
opportunities from time to time, outside of the knowledge I have gained
from books, to get some insight into actual conditions there. But I do
not intend to assert or even suggest that the condition of the American
negro is satisfactory, nor that he has in all things a fair chance.
Nevertheless, from all that I can learn I believe I am safe in saying
that nowhere are there ten millions of black people who have greater
opportunities or are making greater progress than the negroes in
America.
I know that few native Africans will agree with me in this statement.
For example, we had at Tuskegee a student from the Gold Coast who came
to America to study in our Bible Training School and incidentally to
learn something of our methods of study and work. He did not approve
at all of our course of study. There was not enough theology, and too
much work to suit him. As far as he was concerned, he could not see any
value in learning to work, and he thought it was a pretty poor sort of
country in which the people had to devote so much time to labor. “In
my country,” he said, “everything grows of itself. We do not have to
work. We can devote all our time to the larger life.”
LITTLE IMMIGRATION OF NEGROES
In the last ten years the official records show that 37,000 negroes
have left other countries to take residence in the United States. I can
find no evidence to show that any considerable number of black people
have given up residence in America.
The striking fact is, that negroes from other countries are constantly
coming into the United States, and few are going out. This seems in
part to answer the question as to whether the negro is having a fair
chance in America as compared with any other country in which negroes
live in any large numbers.
By far the largest number of negro immigrants come from the West
Indies. Even Haiti, a free negro republic, furnishes a considerable
number of immigrants every year. In all my experience and observation,
however, I cannot recall a single instance in which a negro has left
the United States to become a citizen of the Haitian Republic. On the
other hand, not a few leaders of thought and action among the negroes
in the United States are those who have given up citizenship in the
little Black Republic in order to live under the Stars and Stripes.
The majority of the colored people who come from the West Indies do so
because of the economic opportunities which the United States offers
them. Another large group, however, comes to get education. Here at the
Tuskegee Institute in Alabama we usually have not far from one hundred
students from South America and the various West Indian Islands. In
the matter of opportunity to secure the old-fashioned, abstract book
education several of the West Indian Islands give negroes a better
chance than is afforded them in most of our Southern States, but for
industrial and technical education they are compelled to come to the
United States.
In the matter of political and civil rights, including protection of
life and property and even-handed justice in the courts, negroes in the
West Indies have the advantage of negroes in the United States. In the
island of Jamaica, for example, there are about 15,000 white people and
600,000 black people, but of the “race problem,” in regard to which
there is much agitation in this country, one hears almost nothing
there. Jamaica has neither mobs, race riots, lynchings, nor burnings,
such as disgrace our civilization. In that country there is likewise no
bitterness between white man and black man. One reason for this is that
the laws are conceived and executed with exact and absolute justice,
without regard to race or color.
UNEQUAL LAWS THE CAUSE OF RACIAL TROUBLE IN AMERICA
Reduced to its lowest terms, the fact is that a large part of our
racial troubles in the United States grow out of some attempt to pass
and execute a law that will make and keep one man superior to another,
whether he is intrinsically superior or not. No greater harm can be
done to any group of people than to let them feel that a statutory
enactment can keep them superior to anybody else. No greater injury can
be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to
this or that race, or because of his color, he will be advanced in life
regardless of his own merits or efforts.
In what I have said I do not mean to suggest that in the West Indian
Islands there is any more social intermingling between whites and
blacks than there is in the United States. The trouble in most parts of
the United States is that mere civil and legal privileges are confused
with social intermingling. The fact that two men ride in the same
railway coach does not mean in any country in the world that they are
socially equal.
The facts seem to show, however, that after the West Indian negro
has carefully weighed his civil and political privileges against the
economic and other advantages to be found in the United States, he
decides that, all things considered, he has a better chance in the
United States than at home. The negro in Haiti votes, but votes have
not made that country happy; or have not even made it free, in any
true sense of the word. There is one other fact I might add to this
comparison: nearly all the negro church organizations in the United
States have mission churches in the islands, as they have also in
Africa.
Does the negro in our country have a fair chance as compared with the
native black man in Africa, the home of the negro? In the midst of
the preparation of this article, I met Bishop Isaiah B. Scott of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the strongest and most intelligent
colored men that I know. Bishop Scott has spent the greater part of his
life in the Southern States, but during the last seven years he has
lived in Liberia and traveled extensively on the west coast of Africa,
where he has come into contact with all classes of European white
people. In answer to my question, Bishop Scott dictated the following
sentence, which he authorized me to use:
“The fairest white man that I have met in dealing with the colored
man is the American white man. He understands the colored man better
because of his contact with him, and he has more respect for the
colored man who has accomplished something.”
Basing my conclusions largely on conversations which I have had with
native Africans, with negro missionaries, and with negro diplomatic
officials who have lived in Africa, especially on the west coast and in
South Africa, I am led to the conclusion that, all things considered,
the negro in the United States has a better chance than he has in
Africa.
THE NEGRO AS A DEPENDENT RACE
In certain directions the negro has had greater opportunities in the
States in which he served as a slave than he has had in the States in
which he has been for a century or more a free man. This statement is
borne out by the fact that in the South the negro rarely has to seek
labor, but, on the other hand, labor seeks him. In all my experience
in the Southern States, I have rarely seen a negro man or woman
seeking labor who did not find it. In the South the negro has business
opportunities that he does not have elsewhere. While in social matters
the lines are strictly drawn, the negro is less handicapped in business
in the South than any other part of the country. He is sought after
as a depositor in banks. If he wishes to borrow money, he gets it
from the local bank just as quickly as the white man with the same
business standing. If the negro is in the grocery business or in the
dry-goods trade, or if he operates a drug store, he gets his goods
from the wholesale dealer just as readily and on as good terms as his
white competitor. If the Southern white man has a dwelling-house, a
store-house, factory, school, or court-house to erect, it is natural
for him to employ a colored man as builder or contractor to perform
that work. What is said to be the finest school building in the city of
New Orleans was erected by a colored contractor. In the North a colored
man who ran a large grocery store would be looked upon as a curiosity.
The Southern white man frequently buys his groceries from a negro
merchant.
Fortunately, the greater part of the colored people in the South have
remained as farmers on the soil. The late census shows that eighty per
cent. of Southern negroes live on the land.
There are few cases where a black man cannot buy and own a farm in the
South. It is as a farmer in the Southern States that the masses of my
race have economically and industrially the largest opportunity. No one
stops to ask before purchasing a bale of cotton or a bushel of corn if
it has been produced by a white hand or a black hand.
The negro now owns, as near as I can estimate, 15,000 grocery and
dry-goods stores, 300 drug stores, and 63 banks. Negroes pay taxes on
between $600,000,000 and $700,000,000 of property of various kinds in
the United States. Unless he had had a reasonably fair chance in the
South, the negro could not have gained and held this large amount of
property, and would not have been able to enter in the commerce of this
country to the extent that he has.
SKILLED NEGRO LABOR BETTER TREATED IN THE SOUTH THAN IN THE NORTH
As a skilled laborer, the negro has a better opportunity in the South
than in the North. I think it will be found generally true in the
South as elsewhere that wherever the negro is strong in numbers and in
skill he gets on well with the trades-unions. In these cases the unions
seek to get him in, or they leave him alone, and in the latter case do
not seek to control him. In the Southern States, where the race enters
in large numbers in the trades, the trades-unions have not had any
appreciable effect in hindering the progress of the negro as a skilled
laborer or as a worker in special industries, such as coal-mining,
iron-mining, etc. In border cities, like St. Louis, Washington, and
Baltimore, however, the negro rarely finds work in such industries
as brick-laying and carpentry. One of the saddest examples of this
fact that I ever witnessed was in the City of Washington, where on
the campus of Howard University, a negro institution, a large brick
building was in process of erection. Every man laying brick on this
building was white, every man carrying a hod was a negro. The white
man, in this instance, was willing to erect a building in which negroes
could study Latin, but was not willing to give negroes a chance to lay
the bricks in its walls.
Let us consider for a moment the negro in the professions in the
Southern States. Aside from school teaching and preaching, into which
the racial question enters in only a slight degree, there remain law
and medicine. All told, there are not more than 700 colored lawyers in
the Southern States, while there are perhaps more than 3000 doctors,
dentists, and pharmacists. With few exceptions, colored lawyers feel,
as they tell me, that they do not have a fair chance before a white
jury when a white lawyer is on the other side of the case. Even in
communities where negro lawyers are not discriminated against by
juries, their clients feel that there is danger in intrusting cases to
a colored lawyer. Mainly for these two reasons, colored lawyers are
not numerous in the South; yet, in cases where colored lawyers combine
legal practice with trading and real estate, they have in several
instances been highly successful.
THE DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING UNIFORM TREATMENT
Here again, however, it is difficult to generalize. People speak of
the “race question” in the South, overlooking the fact that each one
of the 1300 counties in the Southern States is a law unto itself. The
result is that there are almost as many race problems as there are
counties. The negro may have a fair chance in one county, and have no
chance at all in the adjoining county. The Hon. Josiah T. Settles, for
example, has practised both criminal and civil law for thirty years in
Memphis. He tells me that he meets with no discrimination on account
of his color either from judges, lawyers, or juries. There are other
communities, like New Orleans and Little Rock, where negro lawyers are
accorded the same fair treatment, and, I ought to add, that, almost
without exception, negro lawyers tell me they are treated fairly by
white judges and white lawyers.
The professional man who is making the greatest success in the South
is the negro doctor, and I should include the pharmacists and dentists
with the physicians and surgeons. Except in a few cities, white doctors
are always willing to consult with negro doctors.
The young negro physician in the South soon finds himself with a large
and paying practice, and, as a rule, he makes use of this opportunity
to improve the health conditions of his race in the community. Some
of the most prosperous men of my race in the South are negro doctors.
Again, the very fact that a negro cannot buy soda-water in a white drug
store makes an opportunity for the colored drug store, which often
becomes a sort of social center for the colored population.
From an economic point of view, the negro in the North, when compared
with the white man, does not have a fair chance. This is the feeling
not only of the colored people themselves, but of almost every one who
has examined into the conditions under which colored men work. But here
also one is likely to form a wrong opinion. There is, to begin with,
this general difference between the North and the South, that whereas
in the South there is, as I have already suggested, a job looking for
every idle man, in the North, on the contrary, there are frequently two
or three idle men looking for every job. In some of the large cities
of the North there are organizations to secure employment for colored
people. For a number of years I have kept in pretty close touch with
those at the head of these organizations, and they tell me that in many
cases they have been led to believe that the negro has a harder time in
finding employment than is actually true. The reason is that those who
are out of employment seek these organizations. Those who have steady
work, in positions which they have held for years, do not seek them.
As a matter of fact, I have been surprised to find how large a number
of colored people there are in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and
Chicago who hold responsible positions in factories, stores, banks, and
other places. In regard to these people one hears very little. There is
a colored man, for example, in Cleveland who has been for years private
secretary to a railway president. In St. Paul there is a colored man
who holds a similar position; in Baltimore there is still another
colored private secretary to a railway president.
THE SHIFTING OF OCCUPATIONS
In recent years there has been a great shifting of employment between
the races. A few years ago all the rough work in the mines, on the
railway, and elsewhere was performed by Irish immigrants. Now this work
is done by Poles, Hungarians, and Italians. In cities like New York,
Chicago, and Pittsburg one finds to-day fewer colored people employed
as hotel waiters, barbers, and porters than twenty years ago. In New
York, however, many colored men are employed in the streets and in
the subways. In Pittsburg thousands of colored men are employed in
the iron mills. In Chicago negroes are employed very largely in the
packing-houses. Twenty years ago in these cities there were almost no
colored people in these industries. In addition to the changes I have
mentioned, many colored people have gone into businesses of various
kinds on their own account. It should be remembered, also, that, while
in some trades and in some places discrimination is made against the
negro, in other trades and in other places this discrimination works
in his favor. The case in point is the Pullman-car service. I question
whether any white man, however efficient, could secure a job as a
Pullman-car porter.
BETTER OPPORTUNITY FOR EDUCATION IN THE NORTH
In the North, as a rule, the negro has the same opportunities for
education as his white neighbor. When it comes to making use of this
education, however, he is frequently driven to a choice between
becoming an agitator, who makes his living out of the troubles of his
race, or emigrating to the Southern States, where the opportunities
for educated colored men are large. One of the greatest sources of
bitterness and despondency among colored people in the North grows
out of their inability to find a use for their education after they
have obtained it. Again, they are seldom sure of just what they may or
may not do. If one is a stranger in a city, he does not know in what
hotel he will be permitted to stay; he is not certain what seat he may
occupy in the theater, or whether he will be able to obtain a meal in a
restaurant.
THE UNCERTAINTY OF TREATMENT OF THE RACE IN THE NORTH
The uncertainty, the constant fear and expectation of rebuff which
the colored man experiences in the North, is often more humiliating
and more wearing than the frank and impersonal discrimination which
he meets in the South. This is all the more true because the colored
youth in most of the Northern States, educated as they are in the same
schools with white youths, taught by the same teachers, and inspired
by the same ideals of American citizenship, are not prepared for the
discrimination that meets them when they leave school.
Despite all this, it cannot be denied that the negro has advantages in
the North which are denied him in the South. They are the opportunity
to vote and to take part, to some extent, in making and administering
the laws by which he is governed, the opportunity to obtain an
education, and, what is of still greater importance, fair and unbiased
treatment in the courts, the protection of the law.
I have touched upon conditions North and South, which, whether they
affect the negro favorably or adversely, are for the most part so
firmly entrenched in custom, prejudice, and human nature that they
must perhaps be left to the slow changes of time. There are certain
conditions in the South, however, in regard to which colored people
feel perhaps more keenly because they believe if they were generally
understood they would be remedied. Very frequently the negro people
suffer injury and wrong in the South because they have or believe
they have no way of making their grievances known. Not only are they
not represented in the legislatures, but it is sometimes hard to get
a hearing even in the press. On one of my educational campaigns in
the South I was accompanied by a colored newspaper man. He was an
enterprising sort of chap and at every public meeting we held he would
manage in some way to address the audience on the subject of his paper.
On one occasion, after appealing to the colored people for some time,
he turned to the white portion of the audience.
“You white folks,” he said, “ought to read our colored papers to find
out what colored people are doing. You ought to find out what they are
doing and what they are thinking. You don’t know anything about us,”
he added. “Don’t you know a colored man can’t get his name in a white
paper unless he commits a crime?”
I do not know whether the colored newspaper man succeeded in getting
any subscriptions by this speech or not, but there was much truth in
his statement.
THE GREATEST SOURCE OF DISSATISFACTION TO THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH
One thing that many negroes feel keenly, although they do not say much
about it to either black or white people, is the conditions of railway
travel in the South.
Now and then the negro is compelled to travel. With few exceptions,
the railroads are almost the only great business concerns in the South
that pursue the policy of taking just as much money from the black
traveler as from the white traveler without feeling that they ought, as
a matter of justice and fair play, not as a matter of social equality,
to give one man for his money just as much as another man. The failure
of most of the roads to do justice to the negro when he travels is the
source of more bitterness than any one other matter of which I have any
knowledge.
It is strange that the wide-awake men who control the railroads in
the Southern States do not see that, as a matter of dollars and cents,
to say nothing of any higher consideration, they ought to encourage,
not discourage, the patronage of nine millions of the black race in
the South. This is a traveling population that is larger than the
whole population of Canada, and yet, with here and there an exception,
railway managers do not seem to see that there is any business
advantage to them in giving this large portion of the population fair
treatment.
What embitters the colored people in regard to railroad travel,
I repeat, is not the separation, but the inadequacy of the
accommodations. The colored people are given half of a baggage-car or
half of a smoking-car. In most cases, the negro portion of the car
is poorly ventilated, poorly lighted, and, above all, rarely kept
clean; and then, to add to the colored man’s discomfort, no matter
how many colored women may be in the colored end of the car, nor how
clean or how well educated these colored women may be, this car is
made the headquarters for the news-boy. He spreads out his papers, his
magazines, his candy, and his cigars over two or three seats. White men
are constantly coming into the car and almost invariably light cigars
while in the colored coach, so that these women are required to ride in
what is virtually a smoking-car.
On some of the roads colored men and colored women are forced to use
the same toilet-room. This is not true of every Southern railway.
There are some railways in the South, notably the Western Railway of
Alabama, which make a special effort to see that the colored people are
given every facility in the day coaches that the white people have,
and the colored people show in many ways that they appreciate this
consideration.
Here is an experience of R. S. Lovinggood, a colored man of Austin,
Texas. I know Mr. Lovinggood well. He is neither a bitter nor a foolish
man. I will venture to say that there is not a single white man in
Austin, Texas, where he lives, who will say that Professor Lovinggood
is anything but a conservative, sensible man.
“At one time,” he said to me, in speaking of some of his traveling
experiences, “I got off at a station almost starved. I begged the
keeper of the restaurant to sell me a lunch in a paper and hand it out
of the window. He refused, and I had to ride a hundred miles farther
before I could get a sandwich.
“At another time I went to a station to purchase my ticket. I was there
thirty minutes before the ticket-office was opened. When it did finally
open I at once appeared at the window. While the ticket-agent served
the white people at one window, I remained there beating the other
until the train pulled out. I was compelled to jump aboard the train
without my ticket and wire back to get my trunk expressed. Considering
the temper of the people, the separate coach law may be the wisest
plan for the South, but the statement that the two races have equal
accommodations is all bosh. I pay the same money, but I cannot have
a chair or a lavatory and rarely a through car. I must crawl out at
all times of night, and in all kinds of weather, in order to catch
another dirty ‘Jim Crow’ coach to make my connections. I do not ask to
ride with white people. I do ask for equal accommodations for the same
money.”
LACK OF A “SQUARE DEAL” IN EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
In the matter of education, the negro in the South has not had what
Colonel Roosevelt calls a “square deal.” In the North, not only the
Jew, the Slav, the Italian, many of whom are such recent arrivals that
they have not yet become citizens and voters, even under the easy terms
granted them by the naturalization laws of the Northern States, have
all the advantages of education that are granted to every other portion
of the population, but in several States an effort is now being made
to give immigrant peoples special opportunities for education over and
above those given to the average citizen. In some instances, night
schools are started for their special benefit. Frequently schools which
run nine months in the winter are continued throughout the summer,
whenever a sufficient number of people can be induced to attend them.
Sometimes, as for example, in New York State, where large numbers of
men are employed in digging the Erie Canal and in excavating the Croton
Aqueduct, camp schools are started where the men employed on these
public works in the day may have an opportunity to learn the English
language at night. In some cases a special kind of text-book, written
in two or three different languages, has been prepared for use in these
immigrant schools, and frequently teachers are specially employed who
can teach in the native languages if necessary.
While in the North all this effort is being made to provide education
for these foreign peoples, many of whom are merely sojourners in this
country, and will return in a few months to their homes in Europe,
it is only natural that the negro in the South should feel that he
is unfairly treated when he has, as is often true in the country
districts, either no school at all, or one with a term of no more
than four or five months, taught in the wreck of a log-cabin and by a
teacher who is paid about half the price of a first-class convict.
This is no mere rhetorical statement. If a negro steals or commits a
murderous assault of some kind, he will be tried and imprisoned, and
then, if he is classed as a first-class convict, he will be rented out
at the rate of $46 per month for twelve months in the year. The negro
who does not commit a crime, but prepares himself to serve the State
as a first-grade teacher, will receive from the State for that service
perhaps $30 per month for a period of not more than six months.
Taking the Southern States as a whole, about $10.23 per capita is spent
in educating the average white boy or girl, and the sum of $2.82 per
capita in educating the average black child.
Let me take as an illustration one of our Southern farming communities,
where the colored population largely outnumbers the white. In Wilcox
County, Alabama, there are nearly 11,000 black children and 2000 white
children of school age. Last year $3569 of the public school fund went
for the education of the black children in that county, and $30,294
for the education of the white children, this notwithstanding that
there are five times as many negro children as white. In other words,
there was expended for the education of each negro child in Wilcox
County thirty-three cents, and for each white child $15. In the six
counties surrounding and touching Wilcox County there are 55,000 negro
children of school age. There was appropriated for their education last
year from the public school fund $40,000, while for the 19,622 white
children in the same counties there was appropriated from the public
fund $199,000.
There are few, if any, intelligent white people in the South or
anywhere else who will claim that the negro is receiving justice in
these counties in the matter of the public school fund. Especially will
this seem true when it is borne in mind that the negro is the main
dependence for producing the farm products which constitute the chief
wealth of that part of Alabama. I say this because I know there are
thousands of fair-minded and liberal white men in the South who do not
know what is actually going on in their own States.
In the State of Georgia, negroes represent forty-two per cent. of the
farmers of the State, and are largely employed as farm laborers on the
plantations. Notwithstanding this fact, Georgia has two agricultural
colleges and eleven district agricultural high schools for whites,
supported at an annual cost to the State of $140,000, while there is
only one school where negroes have a chance to study agriculture, and
to the support of this the State contributes only $8000 a year. When
one hears it said that the negro farmer of Georgia is incompetent
and inefficient as compared with the white farmer of Minnesota or
Wisconsin, can any one say that this is fair to the negro?
Not a few Southern white men see what is needed and are not afraid to
say so. A. A. Gunby of Louisiana recently said: “Every one competent
to speak and honest enough to be candid knows that education benefits
and improves the negro. It makes him a better neighbor and workman, no
matter what you put him at.”
Every one agrees that a public library in a city tends to make better
citizens, keeping people usefully employed instead of spending their
time in idleness or in committing crime. Is it fair, as is true of most
of the large cities of the South, to take the negro’s money in the form
of taxes to support a public library, and then to make no provision for
the negro using any library? I am glad to say that some of the cities,
for instance, Louisville, Kentucky, and Jacksonville, Florida, have
already provided library facilities for their black citizens or are
preparing to do so.
One excuse that is frequently made in the South for not giving the
negro a fair share of the moneys expended for education is that the
negro is poor and does not contribute by his taxes sufficient to
support the schools that now exist. True, the negro is poor; but in
the North that would be a reason for giving him more opportunities for
education, not fewer, because it is recognized that one of the greatest
hindrances to progress is ignorance. As far as I know, only two men
have ever given thorough consideration to the question as to the amount
the negro contributes directly or indirectly toward his own education.
Both of these are Southern white men. One of them is W. N. Sheats,
former Superintendent of Education for the State of Florida. The
other is Charles L. Coon, Superintendent of Schools at Wilson, North
Carolina, and formerly connected with the Department of Education for
that State.
THE NEGRO PAYS MORE THAN HIS SHARE TO EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
In his annual report for 1900, Mr. Sheats made a thorough analysis of
the sources of the school fund in Florida, and of the way in which it
is distributed between the white and negro schools. In referring to the
figures which he obtained, he said:
A glance at the foregoing statistics indicates that the section of
the State designated as “Middle Florida” is considerably behind all
the rest in all stages of educational progress. The usual plea is
that this is due to the intolerable burden of negro education, and a
general discouragement and inactivity is ascribed to this cause. The
following figures are given to show that the education of the negroes
of Middle Florida does not cost the white people of that section one
cent. Without discussing the American principle that it is the duty
of all property to educate every citizen as a means of protection to
the State, and with no reference to what taxes that citizen may pay,
it is the purpose of this paragraph to show that the backwardness of
education of the white people is in no degree due to the presence
of the negro, but that the presence of the negro has been actually
contributing to the sustenance of the white schools.
Mr. Sheats shows that the amount paid for negro schools from negro
taxes or from a division of other funds to which negroes contribute
indirectly with the whites, amounted to $23,984. The actual cost of
negro schools, including their pro rata for administration expenses,
was $19,467.
“If this is a fair calculation,” Mr. Sheats concludes, “the schools for
negroes are not only no burden on the white citizens, but $4525 for
negro schools contributed from other sources was in some way diverted
to the white schools. A further loss to the negro schools is due to the
fact that so few polls are collected from negroes by county officials.”
Mr. Coon, in an address on “Public Taxation and Negro Schools” before
the 1909 Conference for Education in the South, at Atlanta, Georgia,
said:
The South is spending $32,068,851 on her public schools, both
white and black, but what part of this sum is devoted to negro
public schools, which must serve at least forty per cent. of her
school population? It is not possible to answer this question with
absolute accuracy, but it is possible from the several State reports
to find out the whole amount spent for teachers, and in all the
States, except Arkansas, what was spent for white and negro teachers
separately. The aggregate amount now being spent for public teachers
of both races in these eleven States is $23,856,914, or 74.4 per
cent. of the whole amount expended. Of this sum not more than
$3,818,705 was paid to negro teachers, or twelve per cent. of the
total expenditures.
He also brought out the fact that in Virginia, if, in addition to
the direct taxes paid by negroes, they had received their proportion
of the taxes on corporate property and other special taxes, such as
fertilizers, liquor, etc., there would have been expended on the
negro schools $18,077 more than was expended; that is, they would
have received $507,305 instead of $489,228. In North Carolina there
would have been expended $26,539 more than was expended, the negroes
receiving $429,197 instead of $402,658. In Georgia there would have
been expended on the negro schools $141,682 more than was expended.
In other words, Superintendent Coon seems to prove that negro
schools in the States referred to are not only no burden to the white
tax-payers, but that the colored people do not get back all the money
for their schools that they themselves pay in taxes. In each case
there is a considerable amount taken from the negroes’ taxes and spent
somewhere else or for other purposes.
CONVICT LABOR A GREAT EVIL IN THE SOUTH
It would help mightily toward the higher civilization for both races
if more white people would apply their religion to the negro in their
community, and ask themselves how they would like to be treated if
they were in the negro’s place. For example, no white man in America
would feel that he was being treated with justice if every time he
had a case in court, whether civil or criminal, every member of the
jury was of some other race. Yet this is true of the negro in nearly
all of the Southern States. There are few white lawyers or judges who
will not admit privately that it is almost impossible for a negro to
get justice when he has a case against a white man and all the members
of the jury are white. In these circumstances, when a negro fails to
receive justice, the injury to him is temporary, but the injury to the
character of the white man on the jury is permanent.
In Alabama eighty-five per cent. of the convicts are negroes. The
official records show that last year Alabama had turned into its
treasury $1,085,854 from the labor of its convicts. At least $900,000
of this came from negro convicts, who were for the most part rented
to the coal-mining companies in the northern part of the State. The
result of this policy has been to get as many able-bodied convicts
as possible into the mines, so that contractors might increase their
profits. Alabama, of course, is not the only State that has yielded
to the temptation to make money out of human misery. The point is,
however, that while $900,000 is turned into the State treasury from
negro-convict labor, to say nothing of negro taxes, there came out of
the State treasury, to pay negro teachers, only $357,585.
I speak of this matter as much in the interest of the white man as of
the black. Whenever and wherever the white man, acting as a court
officer, feels that he cannot render absolute justice because of public
sentiment, that white man is not free. Injustice in the courts makes
slaves of two races in the South, the white and the black.
THE BALLOT TO THE INTELLIGENT NEGRO
No influence could ever make me desire to go back to the conditions
of Reconstruction days to secure the ballot for the negro. That was
an order of things that was bad for the negro and bad for the white
man. In most Southern States it is absolutely necessary that some
restriction be placed upon the use of the ballot. The actual methods by
which this restriction was brought about have been widely advertised,
and there is no necessity for me discussing them here. At the time
these measures were passed I urged that, whatever law went upon the
statute-book in regard to the use of the ballot, it should apply with
absolute impartiality to both races. This policy I advocate again in
justice to both white man and negro.
Let me illustrate what I mean. In a certain county of Virginia, where
the county board had charge of registering those who were to be voters,
a colored man, a graduate of Harvard University, who had long been a
resident of the county, a quiet, unassuming man, went before the board
to register. He was refused on the ground that he was not intelligent
enough to vote. Before this colored man left the room a white man came
in who was so intoxicated that he could scarcely tell where he lived.
This white man was registered, and by a board of intelligent white men
who had taken an oath to deal justly in administering the law.
Will any one say that there is wisdom or statesmanship in such a policy
as that? In my opinion it is a fatal mistake to teach the young black
man and the young white man that the dominance of the white race in
the South rests upon any other basis than absolute justice to the
weaker man. It is a mistake to cultivate in the mind of any individual
or group of individuals the feeling and belief that their happiness
rests upon the misery of some one else, or that their intelligence
is measured by the ignorance of some one else; or their wealth by
the poverty of some one else. I do not advocate that the negro make
politics or the holding of office an important thing in his life. I
do urge, in the interest of fair play for everybody, that a negro who
prepares himself in property, in intelligence, and in character to cast
a ballot, and desires to do so, should have the opportunity.
In these pages I have spoken plainly regarding the South because I love
the South as I love no other part of our country, and I want to see her
white people equal to any white people on the globe in material wealth,
in education, and in intelligence. I am certain, however, that none of
these things can be secured and permanently maintained except they are
founded on justice.
THE CRIME OF LYNCHING
In most parts of the United States the colored people feel that they
suffer more than others as the result of the lynching habit. When he
was Governor of Alabama, I heard Governor Jelks say in a public speech
that he knew of five cases during his administration of innocent
colored people having been lynched. If that many innocent people were
known to the governor to have been lynched, it is safe to say that
there were other innocent persons lynched whom the governor did not
know about. What is true of Alabama in this respect is true of other
States. In short, it is safe to say that a large proportion of the
colored people lynched are innocent.
A lynching-bee usually has its origin in a report that some crime
has been committed. The story flies from mouth to mouth. Excitement
spreads. Few take the time to get the facts. A mob forms and fills
itself with bad whisky. Some one is captured. In case rape is charged,
the culprit is frequently taken before the person said to have been
assaulted. In the excitement of the moment, it is natural that the
victim should say that the first person brought before her is guilty.
Then comes more excitement and more whisky. Then comes the hanging, the
shooting, or burning of the body.
Not a few cases have occurred where white people have blackened their
faces and committed a crime, knowing that some negro would be suspected
and mobbed for it. In other cases it is known that where negroes have
committed crimes, innocent men have been lynched and the guilty ones
have escaped and gone on committing more crimes.
Within the last twelve months there have been seventy-one cases of
lynching, nearly all of colored people. Only seventeen were charged
with the crime of rape. Perhaps they are wrong to do so, but colored
people in the South do not feel that innocence offers them security
against lynching. They do feel, however, that the lynching habit tends
to give greater security to the criminal, white or black. When ten
millions of people feel that they are not sure of being fairly tried
in a court of justice, when charged with crime, is it not natural that
they should feel that they have not had a fair chance?
I am aware of the fact that in what I have said in regard to the
hardships of the negro in this country I throw myself open to the
criticism of doing what I have all my life condemned and everywhere
sought to avoid; namely, laying over-emphasis on matters in which the
negro race in America has been badly treated, and thereby overlooking
those matters in which the negro has been better treated in America
than anywhere else in the world.
Despite all any one has said or can say in regard to the injustice and
unfair treatment of the people of my race at the hands of the white men
in this country, I venture to say that there is no example in history
of the people of one race who have had the assistance, the direction,
and the sympathy of another race in all its efforts to rise to such an
extent as the negro in the United States.
Notwithstanding all the defects in our system of dealing with him, the
negro in this country owns more property, lives in better houses, is
in a larger measure encouraged in business, wears better clothes, eats
better food, has more school-houses and churches, more teachers and
ministers, than any similar group of negroes anywhere else in the world.
What has been accomplished in the past years, however, is merely an
indication of what can be done in the future.
As white and black learn day by day to adjust, in a spirit of justice
and fair play, those interests which are individual and racial, and
to see and feel the importance of those fundamental interests which
are common, so will both races grow and prosper. In the long run no
individual and no race can succeed which sets itself at war against the
common good.
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
BY JAMES D. CORROTHERS
He came, a dark youth, singing in the dawn
Of a new freedom, glowing o’er his lyre,
Refining, as with great Apollo’s fire,
His people’s gift of song. And, thereupon,
This negro singer, come to Helicon,
Constrained the masters, listening, to admire,
And roused a race to wonder and aspire,
Gazing which way their honest voice was gone,
With ebon face uplit of glory’s crest.
Men marveled at the singer, strong and sweet,
Who brought the cabin’s mirth, the tuneful night,
But faced the morning, beautiful with light,
To die while shadows yet fell toward the west,
And leave his laurels at his people’s feet.
Dunbar, no poet wears your laurels now;
None rises, singing, from your race like you,
Dark melodist, immortal, though the dew
Fell early on the bays upon your brow,
And tinged with pathos every halcyon vow
And brave endeavor. Silence o’er you threw
Flowerets of love. Or, if an envious few
Of your own people brought no garlands, how
Could Malice smite him whom the gods had crowned?
If, like the meadow-lark, your flight was low,
Your flooded lyrics half the hilltops drowned;
A wide world heard you, and it loved you so
It stilled its heart to list the strains you sang,
And o’er your happy songs its plaudits rang.
THE NEGRO SINGER
BY JAMES D. CORROTHERS
O’er all my song the image of a face
Lieth, like shadow on the wild, sweet flowers.
The dream, the ecstasy that prompts my powers;
The golden lyre’s delights bring little grace
To bless the singer of a lowly race.
Long hath this mocked me: aye, in marvelous hours,
When Hera’s gardens gleamed, or Cynthia’s bowers,
Or Hope’s red pylons, in their far, hushed place!
But I shall dig me deeper to the gold;
Fetch water, dripping, over desert miles,
From clear Nyanzas and mysterious Niles
Of love; and sing, nor one kind act withhold.
So shall men know me, and remember long,
Nor my dark face dishonor any song.
[Illustration:
In the Wilstach Gallery, Philadelphia
Engraved on wood by Henry Wolf
THE ANNUNCIATION
PAINTED BY H. O. TANNER]
EXHORTATION (A NEGRO SERMON)
WORDS BY ALEX. ROGERS
MUSIC BY WILL MARION COOK
_Copyright, 1912, by G. Schirmer_
[Illustration:
Re-mem-ber, if a brudder smotes dee on de lef’ cheek,
Turn roun’ and’ han’ him de od-der!
Kase, -- ef you kaint ’turn good fu’ e-vil,----
What’s de good o’ bein’ a brudder?
Sez’ -- when de an-gry pas-sions ris-es wid-in dee,----
Say, “Sat-an,-- go!--git dee be-hin’ me!”
Den stop! an’ count a hun-dert,---- den go on ’bout yo’ bus’ness!--
Be
]
[Illustration:
keer-ful,---- be cau-tious,---- al-ways look be-fo’-- you leap,----
Be sho’ you do-- some pray-in’-- be-fo’ you goes-a to sleep.----
To fight is wrong,---- it’s wrong to fight,----
An’ no two wrongs-a kaint make-a one right,
So try an’ be right unto de en;--
Dat’s right, all right! A-men! A-men!
Dat’s right, all right! A-men! A - A - A - A - A - A - men!----
]
[Illustration:
Scamps of Romance
by
William Rose Benét
]
I
We’re off across the hills to-day with merriment agog,
With pipe and timbrel ribboned gay, with fiddle-scrape and clog.
Then, Nolly Goldsmith, here’s to thee!
Send Villon’s soul no ill!
But all hail that Prince of Vagabonds, Sir John Maundeville!
Oh, Sir John Maundeville, Sir John Maundeville,
Saw more Golcondas in the west than e’er another will!
Brave Marco Polo pales to naught,
Aladdin’s boast is still,
Before the gallant glory of Sir John Maundeville!
So we march--tramp! tramp!--and the ringing of our tread
Hales forth the highway swaggerers of lusty times long dead.
When so the glad world’s purple clad, it’s hail the romance scamp,
With the zesting of our jesting, and our march--tramp! tramp!
II
There’s Spindleshanks and Bonfire-head and trolling Heneree,
And each as mad a braggart bred as any age may see.
There’s castles in each wind-piled cloud and Spain just o’er the
hill;
And, for best of all romancers, there’s Sir John Maundeville!
Oh, Sir John Maundeville, Sir John Maundeville!
Æneas Sylvius, go up, and, Hakluyt, rest you still;
Cathay, Damascus, Lamary, and Persia shall fulfil
The magic of the legends of Sir John Maundeville!
[Illustration:
JOHANNES
DE
MONTEVILLA
]
III
Come, hydra of the Lernean slough! Promethean vulture, come!
The charms that we have learned for you shall strike your terrors
dumb.
The ghost of Raleigh gapes askance; he takes our mirth so ill.
And Pliny louts his bonnet to Sir John Maundeville!
Oh, Sir John Maundeville, Sir John Maundeville!
Of Noah’s Ark and Hills o’ Gold he’ll spin you yarns until
The Chan of rich Cathay’s your slave, and Caffolos is shrill
Singing the lofty praises of Sir John Maundeville!
[Illustration]
IV
We know the wild chimæric herds--Aspis, Leviathan,
And all the fabled beasts and birds were since the world began.
The Solan Geese flop from their trees; yon crawls the Cuckodrill--
And all because we read about Sir John Maundeville!
Oh, Sir John Maundeville, Sir John Maundeville,
From Malabar to Tartary they marvel at you still.
Old Aldrovandus drops a tear in envy fit to kill
Because we sing the praises of Sir John Maundeville.
V
We’re off across the hills to-day with merriment agog,
With pipe and timbrel ribboned gay, with fiddle-scrape and clog.
And in our pack we’ll bring you back
(I’ faith, we swear we will!)
Mad tales and lays your ghost shall praise
Sir John Maundeville.
Oh, Sir John Maundeville, Sir John Maundeville,
The world that gaped at romance then shall gape at romance still.
There’s portents in each autumn leaf,--Vale Parlous o’er the
hill,--
And our jolly dreamland captain is Sir John Maundeville!
So we march--tramp! tramp! Do you wonder that our tread
Stamps up the ghosts of gallant knights from dust of days long dead?
When so the glad world’s romance-clad, it’s hail the romance scamp,
With old glories on our stories, and our march--tramp! tramp!
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Drawn by Oliver Herford]
A CLEAN SHAVE
BY GRACE MAC GOWAN COOKE
Author of “Mistress Joy,” “The Machinations of Ocoee Gallantine,” etc.,
etc.
WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY F. E. SCHOONOVER
There was a storm brewing. The sun had gone down in splendor over Big
Bald; heat lightnings laced the primrose of its afterglow. Now the air
trembled to a presage of thunder; the world panted for its outburst of
elemental rage.
The camp-meeting was in a brush arbor; the dry leaves on the boughs
with which it was roofed rustled faintly when breathings of the coming
tempest whispered across the highlands. The congregation, seated on
backless puncheon benches, seemed to crouch beneath the uncertain
illumination of a few torches and lanterns. Protracted meetings in the
mountains are always held in midsummer, when the crops are laid by,
so that perhaps the rising generation comes to associate their souls’
salvation and hot, breathless nights like this. Fleeing from the wrath
to come no doubt gets hopelessly mixed in some minds with running for
adequate shelter from the sudden passionate thunder-storms of the
season.
There were six exhorters at work, swaying on their feet, shouting, two
of them singing, the mourners’ bench partly filled, a promising tremor
of excitement abroad in that portion of the congregation which had not
yet come forward or risen for prayer--and the shower was almost upon
them.
Vesta Turrentine, who always came up from the riverside store kept
by her widower father at Turrentine’s Landing to stay with her Aunt
Miranda during protracted meetings, had withdrawn to the end of a
bench, where she sat with bowed head, watchful, agonizedly alert,
letting her attitude pass for that of a penitent, hoping to be
undisturbed. She was a slim, finely built young creature, already past
the mere adolescence at which the mountain girl is apt to seek a mate.
As she sat, chin on hand, dark eyes staring straight forward, her
salient profile, a delicate feminine replica of old Jabe Turrentine’s
own eagle outlines, relieved against the lights of the meeting, a man
who crawled through the bushes found her very good to look upon. So
absorbed was he in staring at her that he did not notice another man,
deeper in shadow, who stared at him. Careless of observation, certain
that the meeting was fully occupied with itself, Ross Adene, the first
man, crept forward to the girl’s knee, touched it, laid his yellow head
against it with a murmured greeting.
[Illustration:
Drawn by F. E. Schoonover
Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill
“HE WORKED WITH THE AIR OF A MAN WHO HAS COME AT LAST TO SOME DECISION,
TURNED TO REACH FOR THE TOWEL--AND LOOKED INTO THE MUZZLE OF HIS OWN
GUN, WITH HIS DAUGHTER’S RESOLUTE EYES BEHIND IT” (SEE PAGE 69)]
“Ross?” The whisper was strangled by terror; her hand went down against
his hair, spread protectingly to conceal its shine.
“Who did you reckon it was?” whispered the young fellow. “Anybody else
hangin’ round hidin’ to get sight of ye and a chance to speak with ye?”
“Didn’t you get my word?” Vesta breathed. “Pappy’s on the
mounting--unless’n the storm’s turned him back.”
“I reckon it has,” Ross answered, settling himself comfortably in the
deep shadow beside her. “It’s shore goin’ to be a big one.”
As he spoke there was an instant’s breathless hush of the voices in
the meeting, a dying down of the lights. It was followed by a white
flash so blinding, so all-enveloping, that in it one could see nothing.
Close after came a crash which seemed to rend earth and menace heaven.
The young fellow leaped to his feet, regardless of all concealment,
pulling the girl up beside him, flinging an arm about her. After that
lightning-flash the torches and lanterns seemed darkness. Women were
screaming, mothers calling to their children, men shouting hoarsely,
and running toward plunging teams hitched in the grove.
It would have seemed that in such confusion even the rashest intruder
might go unchallenged, unrecognized, yet Vesta pushed her companion
from her and into the shadow again before she looked around for her
people. Her Aunt Miranda was puffing ponderously down the aisle toward
a shrieking infant which had awakened from its nap on a back bench.
“Aunt ’Randy,” Vesta called, “I’m goin’ home with--somebody. I’m all
right. I’ll be thar afore ye.”
She could see Mrs. Minter’s lips shape themselves to some words which
her vigorously nodded head suggested were those of assent. She dipped
into the dark; Ross swept his sweetheart up on a capable arm, and they
set off running down the wood path which led across the fields to the
Minter place.
The noises of the meeting behind them diminished as they ran. Other
people were hurrying through the forest, calling, assuring themselves
of the whereabouts and safety of members of their parties. Here and
there lanterns or torches flickered.
“Hadn’t we better go through the bushes?” panted the girl. “Somebody’s
apt to see ye--an’ then--”
“No,” returned Adene, half lifting her along; “nobody’ll take notice in
a storm like this; an’ if they should, I’m about tired of dodgin’. We
got to marry sometime, girl. How about then? Yer pappy’ll know then,
won’t he?”
Thereafter they ran in silence. Twice the lightning illuminated their
way, diminishing peals of thunder following. It was after the second
of these that a shot rang out, startling Vesta so that she clung to
Ross’s arm and screamed. The young fellow made the usual dry comment of
the mountain-born, “They’s a man standin’ somewhars right now with an
empty gun in his hand.” Then they fled breathlessly under the cover of
a projecting ledge in the small bluff among the bushes which had been
Adene’s objective point. The heavens opened, and the floods descended.
There is something cozy and delightful about standing sheltered and
dry, while the whole world falls down in rain, the elements themselves
seeking all in vain to reach and destroy you. Vesta put out a hand to
let the great drops strike on it, pushing back her hair and lifting her
face to the keen, sweet coolness of the downpour.
“Don’t you love it?” she asked again and again. “Hit ’minds me of
playin’ when I was a child, and just goin’ crazy hollerin’ ‘Rain flag’
when hit come down this a-way.”
“You an’ me used to play that together,” Ross reminded her. “That was
in the days before your dad took up the feud again.”
At this the girl turned and clutched him.
“Oh, Ross, I sent ye word not to come to-night,” she said, “but I
wanted to see ye an’ warn ye, too. Pappy’s actin’ quare. He’s bound I
shall marry.”
“Well, so ’m I,” assented Ross, half humorously. “Him an’ me won’t fall
out over that.”
“Don’t make a joke of it,” said Vesta. “Hit’s as much as your life’s
worth, an’ you know it. Hit’s as much as your life’s worth to be here
to-night. We ort never to meet again.”
She added the concluding words in a lower tone not intended, perhaps,
for her lover’s ears.
“Has he picked out a man for ye?” The young fellow returned to what she
had first said.
“U-m--h-m,” assented Vesta, reluctantly.
“Who?”
“Sam Beath.” She spoke very low.
“Sam Beath.” The young fellow repeated her words louder. “That feller
that come up from the Far Cove neighborhood to stay in the store?”
“Pappy don’t like him--for me--so very well,” Vesta faltered, “but he’s
kin to kin of ourn, an’--you know, he’ll keep up the feud. Pappy says
I’m gittin’ awful old; an’--”
“If what he wants is to see his gal married, you an’ me’ll wed
to-morrow night after meetin’,” Ross declared.
Vesta laid hold of the lapels of his coat. She even slipped an arm
about his neck in entreaty, a tremendous demonstration for a mountain
girl, who feels that she must always be in the shy, reluctant attitude
of one who is besought, whose scruples are overcome.
“Ross, I know ye don’t mean it, honey, but, oh, for any sakes! walk
careful! Three years you an’ me has been promised to each other,
a-meetin’ wherever we could, me scared to death for ye all the time;
but pappy ain’t never found it out. Ross, give me yo’ word that you’ll
be careful.”
A fleeting glow showed Adene his sweetheart’s pale, entreating face,
and then came darkness and the steady drumming of the rain on the
leaves.
“You an’ me are a-goin’ to be married to-morrow night after meetin’
at Brush Arbor,” he repeated doggedly. And Vesta, used to the men of
her world, with whom action follows the word swiftly, if it does not
precede, began to cry, leaning weakly against his shoulder.
“Ross, I’ll run away with ye, I’ll go anywhars you say. I’ll work my
fingers to the bone for you. I’ll never look on the face of my kin
again--for your sake.”
In her pleading she raised her voice until it was almost a cry. The
storm had died down; the lisp of falling water scarcely blurred the
sound of their words.
“Not for my sake you won’t,” returned her lover, sturdily, putting a
strong arm about her, bending to cup her cheek in his hand. “Why, I
like your daddy fine. I picked him out for a father-in-law same’s I
picked you out for a wife. I ain’t never had any dad of my own to look
to. Yourn suits me. I’ll make friends with him.”
“And why ain’t you got no father?” inquired Vesta, tragically. “’Ca’se
my uncle shot him down when you was a baby in your mother’s lap--and
there all the trouble began.”
“Hit’s a long time ago,” said Ross, philosophically. “I ain’t bearin’
any grudge till yet. I reckon if your uncle hadn’t ’a’ got my father,
my father’d ’a’ got him. I aim to marry ye, here in Brush Arbor
meetin’, an’ make friends with your daddy an’ put an end to the feud.”
As a spectacular conclusion to the storm, and apparently to Ross’s
speech as well, there blazed through the woods a sudden greenish-white
radiance of lightning. It flickered on the wet leaves, giving them
a phosphorescent glow; it lit with an infernal illumination a face
peering between those leaves, looking squarely into Adene’s own--a dark
face, full of the strong beauty of age and courage, vivid yet with the
zest of life. The young fellow’s hand went up to cover Vesta’s eyes, to
press her head in against his breast.
“What is it?” she breathed.
“You said you was scared of lightning,” Ross answered close to her ear,
as the thunder reverberated through a darkened, wet world.
Evidently she had not seen. Certainly he would not tell her. As the
detonations died down, he stood rigid, waiting for the bolt of death,
weighing with instant clearness the chance of whether old Jabe would
kill only him, or slay as well the daughter who had proved treacherous.
Nothing came. A light wind sprang up and set drops pattering down from
the boughs. The storm-clouds were rent, torn, scattered, rolling
sullenly away to the north. A few drowned stars began to make the sky
lighter.
All at once, as he waited for the death that came not, Ross remembered
the shot they had heard as they ran through the woods. That was Jabe
Turrentine’s gun. Turrentine had been the man standing with an empty
weapon, without another cartridge to reload. When he was certain of
this, Adene felt momentarily safe. The old panther had missed his
spring; he would not try again to-night. Ross laughed a little softly
to himself as he imagined Jabe skulking quietly between the dripping
trees to the horse that must be tied somewhere near the timber’s edge,
getting on the animal and riding down the river road to his store. Yes,
that’s what the old man would do. And, after that, Ross Adene knew that
the next move in the game was his.
“I reckon I’d better take you on home,” he said at length. “If we’re
a-goin’ to be married to-morrow night, I’ve got some sev-rul things to
do.”
Hand in hand they went through the drenched leafage, speaking low,
Vesta trying feebly to remonstrate. When they came to where the
lighted windows of the Minter cabin made squares of ruddy light in the
blue-black darkness, Ross said his farewells.
“You put on whatever frock it is you want to be married in to-morrow
night and go to meetin’,” he concluded. “For wedded we’ll shorely be at
Brush Arbor church. I’ll speak to the preacher, an’ mebby your daddy’ll
come to the weddin’ hisself.”
Vesta wept. She kissed her lover farewell as we bid good-by to the
dead. In the dim radiance streaming out from the dwelling she watched
his rain-gemmed, yellow head as he walked away, hat in hand, shoulders
squared, moving proudly.
“O Lord,” she sighed to herself, “why can’t men persons take things
like women does--a few ill words and no harm done?”
The night sky refusing answer, she went silently in and to bed.
* * * * *
Next morning Ross Adene put his house in order, as might a man on the
eve of a duel. His day was busily spent. He notified the revivalist
who was conducting meetings at Brush Arbor church of an intention to
wed Vesta Turrentine directly after sermon that night, and, late in
the afternoon, took his dugout canoe and dropped thoughtfully down the
river toward Turrentine’s Landing. There was money in his pocket, but
no weapon on him. He had not traveled the road, for he knew that even
in daylight some wayside clump of trees might hide an ambush. He put
his canoe into the current, crossed the stream, going down the farther
bank, out of rifle-shot of the leaning willows that dipped long, green
tresses to the water, offering a veil for a possible foe. When he was
opposite the landing he came squarely across, his eyes searching the
prospect ahead.
There was nobody about as he beached his boat, pulling it well up out
of reach of the current, and walked deliberately toward the store.
The landing had no village, the only buildings being the store,
Turrentine’s dwelling, and barns. He approached the former by the
front way, and stopped in the door, offering a glorious target to any
hostile person who might be within; for he stood six feet tall and
broad-shouldered against the westering light. The interior of the room
was at first obscure to him, but almost immediately he made out old
Jabe behind the counter and Sam Beath sitting humped in a chair at the
back of the store.
For a moment no word was spoken. There was no exclamation, though there
was a mental shock of encounter, evinced by not so much as the tremor
of an eye upon the part of either of the principals. Beath it was who
glanced stealthily toward the corner where Turrentine’s loaded rifle
stood.
“Howdy,” said Ross in the even, musical monotone of his people.
“Howdy,” responded old Jabe’s deep bass.
Beath did not speak. Ross remained in the doorway until he considered
that he had given quite sufficient opportunity for any gentleman who
desired to pick a vital spot in his frame. When he felt he had been
amply generous in this way, he came stepping slowly into the building,
walked to the counter, and laid his empty hands upon it.
“And what can I do for you to-day?” inquired old Jabe with a sardonic
exaggeration of the shopkeeper’s manner.
“I want to buy me a right good suit of clothes,” returned Ross, mildly.
The man in the back of the store, staring at the two, began to wonder
when old Jabe would take advantage of the opening offered him.
“Err-um,” grunted Turrentine. “Somethin’ to be buried in--eh?”
“Well--no,” demurred the customer, amiably. “Somethin’ to be married
in. A weddin’ suit is what I’m a-seekin’.”
Beath’s eyes went without any volition of his own to a bolt of fine
white muslin on the shelf. From that Vesta had chosen a dress pattern
the day her father bade him ask her in marriage. His proposal had been
bafflingly received, but she had chosen the dress and taken it with her
to her Aunt Miranda’s to finish.
Meantime, as though his customer had been any mountain man of the
district, the storekeeper calmly estimated Ross’s height and breadth,
turned to his shelves, and pulled down a suit. The two immersed
themselves in a discussion of fabric and cut. The assistant, used to
old Jabe’s browbeating, could scarcely believe his eyes as he noted the
glances of approval his employer gave to the goodly proportions he was
fitting. Beath’s ears seemed to him equally unreliable when Turrentine,
a big man himself, remarked with apparent geniality on the chance of a
wrestling-bout between them.
“I ain’t backin’ off,” responded Adene, “but I’d ruther stand up to you
when I didn’t have somethin’ else on hand.”
“Aw, I’m gittin’ old,” said Turrentine, deprecatingly. “Time was when
you might have said such of me; but I’m gittin’ old.”
The blue eyes of the younger man looked ingenuously into the face so
like Vesta’s.
“Well, we’re all gettin’ older day by day,” Ross allowed, “but yet you
don’t look as though you was losin’ your stren’th, an’ that’s a fact.”
Turrentine folded the suit and laid it on the counter.
“I think them clothes’ll fit ye,” he said. “An’ I’ll th’ow in this
hyer necktie you looked at. I always th’ow in a necktie with a suit.
That all?”
“Well--no,” Ross repeated his phrase. “I want to buy the best razor
you’ve got in the shop.”
With a sudden movement that might have been excitement or even rage,
Sam Beath took off his hat and cast it on the floor beside his chair.
Turrentine bent down to get from under the counter a tray of razors,
setting it on the boards and inviting his customer’s attention. Beath
could scarcely bear to look at the two men facing each other across
these bits of duplicated and reduplicated death, so tremendously did
the juxtaposition excite him. He felt as he had sometimes on the
hunting trail when the kill was imminent--as though he must cry out.
Jabe and Ross were oblivious, trying, choosing, drawing their thumbs
lightly over edges.
“I believe I like that un,” Ross said finally. “What say?”
“You’ve got a good eye for a blade,” old Jabe agreed, taking the razor
in his fingers. “That thar’s by far the best un in the lot.” He opened
and held it up, so that a stray gleam of sun winked wickedly upon the
steel. “You could cut a man’s head off with that, slick an’ clean, ef
ye had luck strikin’ a j’int--an’ I allers _do_ have luck.”
“I wasn’t aimin’ to put it to no such use,” Ross commented gently. “An’
yit, when you’re a-buyin’ a tool, hit’s but reasonable to know what its
cay-pacities may be. I’ll take that un.”
“Now--is that all?” Jabe put his query with the half-smile of a man who
might easily suggest something else. He laid the razor with the other
purchases.
“Is it honed, ready to use?” inquired Ross.
“Why, yes,” agreed old Jabe in a slightly puzzled tone. “A few licks on
a strop or your boot-laig’ll make it all right.”
Ross was rubbing a rough cheek with thoughtful fingers, looking
sidewise at the storekeeper.
“I’m a-goin’ to git married to-night,” he murmured. “Looks like I need
a clean shave. They tell me you’re a master hand at shavin’ folks. Will
ye shave me?”
Beath’s chair dropped forward with a slam, but neither of the men
started or turned. The black eyes burned deep into the blue; the blue
were unfathomable. Behind a mask of primitive civility the two men
interrogated savagely each other’s motives. Jabe was the first to speak.
“Why, shorely, shorely,” he said with what seemed to Beath ominous
relish. “Set down on that thar cheer that’s got a high back to it, so’s
you can lean yo’ head right. Sam,”--Beath leaped as though he had been
struck,--“bring me the wash-pan an’ soap an’ a towel. I’ll git the
lather-brush.”
Beath finally arrived with the required articles. His shaking hand
had spilled half the water from the basin; his eyes gloated. He put
the things down on a box and retired once more to his chair, seating
himself with the air of a man at a play.
Ross leaned back, found a comfortable rest for his head, and closed his
eyes. The strong, brown young throat exposed by the turned-down collar
of his shirt fascinated Beath so that he could not look away from it.
Jabe took the towel and put it about his customer’s neck with expert
fingers. As he did so, Beath’s hand began to play about his own throat,
and there was a click as it nervously contracted. Turrentine dipped
his brush in the water and whirled it on the soap-cake, lathering
Ross’s face silently and with a preoccupied manner. Beath’s glance
flickered from the man in the chair to the man who worked over him.
When Jabe took up the razor, passed it once or twice across the strop
and approached it to Ross’s cheek, Beath swallowed so noisily that the
sound of it was loud in the silent room.
Suavely--the old man was grace itself--the operation of shaving the
bridegroom was begun. Placidly it progressed, with a murmured word
between the two men, the deft turning of the inert head by the amateur
barber, an occasional deep-toned request.
Yet always the onlooker shook with anticipation of the sweep of old
Jabe’s arm which must come. Continually Beath figured to himself the
sudden jetting out of crimson from that artery in the neck that was
beating evenly and calmly under old Jabe’s touch. Perhaps the end might
have arrived then and there, and swiftly, had those fingers felt the
swell of excitement in the blood of a possible victim. But Ross had
closed his eyes and seemed to be dozing. Jabe made an excellent job of
it.
“Thar--I believe that’s about all you need,” he remarked at length.
The low sun came through the door between piles of calico, heaps of
ax-handles, and glinted on Adene’s yellow head. Suddenly Beath felt the
light for a moment obscured. He glanced up to see a woman’s figure,
black against the glow, yet unmistakable in its slim alertness, and
clothed, as his eye accustomed to fabrics told him, in the white muslin
he had believed to be selected for a wedding-dress. Neither old Jabe
nor his customer appeared to mark as Vesta Turrentine slipped like a
shadow through the doorway and stole to the corner where her father’s
rifle stood. Sam watched as she lifted the weapon in practised fingers.
His mouth was open, but he did not cry out.
Ross unclosed his eyes lazily, raised his thumb to his cheek, close by
the ear, very near indeed to the great veins and arteries Beath had
looked to see the razor sever.
“Ain’t they a rough place right thar?” he inquired with a half-smile.
The ultimate spark of daring was in the eyes that gazed up into those
of the man Ross had chosen for a father-in-law. Old Jabe, with a
portentously solemn face, muttered an assent, dabbed the lather on, and
made a pass with his razor.
“U-m-m--looks like they was a little more to do in that direction.
Maybe I ain’t quite finished ye up yit,” the old man’s voice had a
lilt of laughter in it, and it seemed that the end had surely arrived.
Turrentine’s devil was always a laughing fiend. He worked with the air
of a man who has come at last to some decision, turned to reach for the
towel--and looked into the muzzle of his own gun, with his daughter’s
resolute eyes behind it.
There was no start, no outcry; the old fellow only stood, scowling,
formidable, checked midway in some spectacular vengeance, Beath was
sure. The clerk crept, stooping behind the piles of merchandise, toward
Vesta.
“Put down that thar razor.”
The girl’s tone had a ring of old Jabe’s own power.
“Ye say,” drawled Jabe, making a jest of a necessity, as he laid the
blade on the counter. “What else?”
“You let him walk out o’ that door with me, same as he walked in,”
Vesta’s air was resolute, her aim steady.
At the first word Adene had turned his head merely, showing no
disposition to get beyond Jabe’s reach. But in the instant of her
demand Beath rose up from behind some boxes, grasped the gun,
twisting its barrel upward, and disarming Vesta. Ross sprang toward
his sweetheart, hit out at the clerk’s unguarded side, and sent him
staggering across the room, to fall sprawling at his employer’s feet.
For a long moment while Beath was scrambling to hands and knees, life
and death seemed to hang in the balance as old Jabe studied the two
opposite; mechanically he had taken the gun Beath thrust into his hand.
When Vesta saw it in his grasp, she flung herself upon her lover’s
breast, clasping her arms about him, protecting his life with hers.
“Me first,” she screamed. “You’ll have to kill me first.” She waited
for the bullet.
Jabe interrogated the pair with remorseless eye; he moved forward a
pace, though Sam Beath on all fours thought it was plenty close to
shoot. His gun was not raised. Instead, the old man and the young
were studying each other once more, speeding messages from eye to eye
above Vesta’s bent head. At last Jabe seemed to find that for which he
sought. He looked long at the daughter who defied him in words, and her
lover who braved him in action. Adene read the look aright.
“You’re bid to the weddin’ at Brush Arbor church, father-in-law,” he
said in the tone of one who finds a satisfactory answer to a riddle.
The gun-butt rattled on the puncheon floor.
“Will your dugout hold three?” asked Jabe.
Vesta stirred, but still feared to look up.
“Shore; five, by crowdin’,” came the answer.
The girl raised her head, glanced incredulously from father to lover,
and a light of comprehension dawned in her eyes.
“An’ me,” yammered Sam Beath. “What about me?”
“You can keep sto’ or come along to the weddin’, accordin’ to yo’
ruthers,” allowed old Jabe, generously; “ye hearn my son-in-law say his
boat would hold five.”
[Illustration: Drawn by Oliver Herford]
TO ANY ONE
BY WITTER BYNNER
Whether the time be slow or fast,
Enemies hand in hand
Must come together at the last
And understand.
No matter how the die is cast
Or who may seem to win,
You know that you must love at last!--
Why not begin?
[Illustration: THOROUGHBREDS AND TROTTERS AS SADDLE-HORSES
BY E. S. NADAL
Drawn by Joseph Clement Coll]
Ever since the employment of an English judge of saddle-horses at the
New York Horse Show, a few years ago, a lively discussion has been
going on between the advocates of thoroughbreds and of our American
saddle-horse, which is for the most part trotting-bred, upon the
subject of their respective merits as saddle-horses. The English
judge had of course an Englishman’s preference for a thoroughbred.
He has shown this in his awards, and he has established a class of
thoroughbreds under saddle. His view has naturally not found favor
with the friends of the American saddle-horse, an animal usually a
cross between the trotter and the Kentucky saddle-horse, which is a
registered family, and is itself largely of trotting ancestry. The
discussion, however, has not been confined to the merits of these two
animals as saddle-horses, but has covered the whole subject of their
respective characteristics.
Against the thoroughbred it is charged that he is unsound, wanting in
stamina, flighty and excitable, and has not the trotting action to make
a comfortable hack under the saddle or to become a good harness-horse,
and even that he is inferior to some other horses in style and beauty.
There is a certain truth in these accusations; but they contain also a
great deal of untruth.
It is not possible to say that there is a want of stamina in a family
of horses to which belong all runners, virtually all steeplechasers,
and from which are directly descended all hunters and nearly all
cavalry horses. Nearly all steeplechasers are thoroughbreds, and
these horses do their four miles like old-fashioned runners, besides
going over the exhausting jumps. And how can blood be said to want
stamina which is the basis of the blood of all the cavalry horses in
Europe? In 1870 the German cavalry horses of this breeding could do
their thirty-five miles a day for three months during the roughest
winter weather. And taking it nearer home, do any horses surpass in
toughness the half-bred horses of Canada and tide-water Virginia? The
old Virginians say that Kentucky can show a better head and tail than
can be found in Virginia, but that for everything between Virginia
is better, and the assertion is not without a color of truth. My
observation is that, as a rule, trotting and saddle-bred horses have
not the stamina of the best horses descended from the thoroughbred.
When we come to speak of gaits under the saddle, it will of course
be admitted that thoroughbreds can walk, canter, and gallop. Their
deficiency is in the trot. Most thoroughbreds do not show good hock
action. They do not give one that definite rise and fall which one
should have when riding at a trot. But there are thoroughbreds that
have good hock action. Where, for instance, can one find better hock
action than in the thoroughbred mare Jasmine, which has lately been
seen about New York? There are many thoroughbreds with such a trot.
[Illustration]
When we come to speak of disposition, the case against the thoroughbred
is rather stronger. It cannot be denied that he is hot-tempered. That
an animal should be used for generations for an exciting employment,
and that employment an artificial one, must result, one would expect,
in some eccentricity of temper. And the bad effects are rendered worse
by certain necessary concomitants of the employment. It cannot be good
for the temper of an animal two years old to be an hour getting away
at the start, and to be whipped and spurred for the last hundred yards
of every race. As a matter of fact, they are frequently as excitable
and often as vicious as one might expect animals to be which had been
subjected to such an experience. There is a thoroughbred stallion
in Kentucky that has killed two grooms. It is said that an attempt,
which for some reason was not successful, was made to put out his
eyes in order that he could be handled with safety. A few years ago
at Lexington I was told that a thoroughbred stallion at a stable
near by had just taken two fingers off a groom’s hand. I went to the
stable, had the animal brought out, and studied his countenance from
a respectful distance, and he looked to me as though he could do it.
The eye was somewhat ruthless, perhaps, but I should not say that the
countenance was vicious or ill tempered. It had rather the opaque look
of faces one will see behind the bars of a menagerie--faces unrelated
to kindness or unkindness, and expressive only of the wish to survive
and the readiness to perish in the struggle for existence. A few years
ago we had in my native county, Greenbrier County, West Virginia, a
celebrated performer on the turf, King Cadmus, which had killed at
least one person. Once, when racing, he seized with his teeth a jockey
on a horse that was passing him, threw him under his feet, and killed
him. He was a lop-eared, rough-made brute, and if a man did not know
him and took him for some harmless old screw, which might easily be
possible, without any sign of ill temper he would allow the man to
approach till he was in reach of his teeth, when he would try to seize
him and throw him under his feet. Some of his colts are still about
Greenbrier, and, strangely enough, do not seem to have inherited his
vicious disposition,--an instance, I suppose, of failure to transmit
acquired characteristics. I remember when a boy seeing Rarey leading
about his celebrated Cruiser, which must have been very much such a
horse as Cadmus. Possibly the animals I have mentioned might have been
reformed if they had had such a handler as Rarey.
But these horses are exceptions, as it is hardly necessary to point
out. A few years ago in Kentucky I rode for some weeks a four-year-old
thoroughbred stallion that a child could have ridden, a very handsome
bay, sixteen hands high, very fashionably bred (half-brother to
Foxhall). He had been raced, but had not been found fast enough for the
track. He was perfectly gentle. His only fault was not one of temper
at all. He was a little sluggish, sluggishness being sometimes a fault
of thoroughbreds. This fault affected his trot. A certain ambition and
steady force in a horse are necessary to a comfortable trot.
But apart from the subject of gaits and disposition, it is claimed
that the thoroughbred is inferior in style and beauty to certain other
horses, such, for instance, as the Kentucky saddle-horse. That, of
course, is a matter of taste, and tastes differ and change from time
to time. I prefer the Kentucky horse myself, and believe him to be
the handsomest horse in the world, and yet I find that when I go to
England and live among people to whom the thoroughbred type seems
perfection, I begin insensibly to see it as they do, and so I think
will almost any one. There is no doubt that the type at its best is
very beautiful. I have now in mind a chestnut mare, Miss Trix, which
I saw at a pretty little show in the west of England summer before
last and which afterward took the first prize at the international in
London. A more beautiful creature it would be hard to find, or one
better gaited or better mannered. And even when one sees this type in
this country, where the taste and feeling are mostly on the side of the
Kentucky horse, it is impossible to deny that it is beautiful. Three
years ago at the State fair at Lexington I saw a class of thoroughbred
stallions judged very early before the crowd was on the grounds. It
was an extraordinary display of equine beauty that was gaily paraded
before the stand on that bright and fragrant September morning, and,
difficult as the choice seemed, the blue ribbon went deservedly to the
most beautiful, a brown horse named Jack-pot. Later in the day I saw
Jack-pot judged for the championship against the superbly handsome and
universally accomplished chestnut stallion Bourbon King, the champion
saddle-horse of Kentucky. The prize went to Bourbon King, and I myself
should have so voted; but surely no one would propose that such a type
of beauty as Jack-pot should be allowed to disappear from the earth.
[Illustration: ATHLETE. A COMBINATION TROTTING AND SADDLE BRED HORSE
FROM GREENBRIER COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA]
There is one point in which the thoroughbred is doubtless superior
to the Kentucky saddle-horse. I mean the shoulder. The fault of the
Kentucky saddle-horse often is that he is thick in the shoulder.
The Kentucky horse would be about perfect if one could give him the
shoulder of the thoroughbred; yes, and if one could give him a little
heavier bone. No doubt the Kentucky men would say that the proof of
the pudding is in the eating, and since the Kentucky horse, as he now
is, is about perfect in gaits, there is no occasion to change him.
There is reason in this, and yet there are practical advantages in the
thoroughbred shoulder. The rider grasps it with his knees more easily
than a thicker shoulder. And for women who ride with a side-saddle
a deep and slender shoulder and high withers are a necessity;
they are needed to hold a side-saddle in place. If the horse is
thick-shouldered, the groom must be continually getting off to tighten
the girths, which thus have to be made so tight that the animal can
scarcely breathe. And then, quite apart from its utility, there is
no doubt of the beauty of the thoroughbred shoulder. It is beautiful
whether you see it in Jack-pot or Miss Trix, or in some old screw of
thoroughbred ancestry that pulls a grocer’s wagon. You will sometimes
see about a stable a half-starved, uncared-for animal with a shoulder
the memory of which will remain with you for years. That shoulder is
entirely the property of the thoroughbred. You never see it except in a
thoroughbred or a descendant of thoroughbreds. I do not know whence it
comes. It does not appear to come from the Arab, from which are derived
most of the characteristics of the thoroughbred. It can come only from
the thoroughbred. For this reason I cannot agree with those critics
who have opposed the recent action of the Kentucky saddle-horsemen in
admitting to registration the product of Kentucky saddle-horses crossed
with thoroughbreds. Of course it is to be hoped that breeders will
choose those thoroughbreds that are without certain thoroughbred faults.
[Illustration: Drawn by Joseph Clement Coll
AWARDING THE BLUE RIBBON]
There is one purpose for which thoroughbreds are certainly necessary.
Hunters must be of thoroughbred blood. There are horses not of
thoroughbred blood that can be taught to jump, but a hunter must also
be able to run. It is often said that hunting in this country is
not serious, and that is probably true. Hunting over timber is too
dangerous to be widely and generally practised. It is different from
hunting over hedges, which can be broken through. A horse must clear
a wood fence if he is to get over it safely. If he strikes the fence
with his knees, he may turn a somersault and fall on his rider, and
horses cannot be relied upon to clear fences. The most celebrated of
English hunters, Assheton Smith, who had made a study of falling and
had learned how to fall, had sixty falls the year he was eighty. (By
the way, one wonders what kind of horses he rode; they could have done
better for him than that in Virginia.) We may be sure he did not have
those falls over timber.
But it is not certain that hunting has no considerable future in this
country. Knowing what the spirit of sport has accomplished here within
the memory of most of us, there is no saying what it may yet do. I have
sometimes wondered why some such large preserves of land, stretches of
forest and meadow as are taken by clubs for shooting and fishing, are
not set apart for hunting, in which it would be possible to hunt the
stag and the fox or even to revive sports more old fashioned.
I lately found a hunting-man in Virginia, a nice fellow and a
gentleman, who has a whole valley to himself in which to pursue the
fox. He has his own pack of hounds, and as his business is training
hunters, he has always in his stable half a dozen animals he can use.
To be sure he does not own the valley, a beautiful one; but he is quite
as well off as though he did, for there are no wire fences, the timber
fences are not too plentiful, and he tells me he can always start a
fox. He hunts entirely alone, and does not mind the lack of company.
He happens to be afflicted with an infirmity of speech, which makes
the society of all but a few of his fellow-creatures irksome to him.
This kind of sport was a new idea to me, who had always thought of
hunting as done in company and with the accompaniment of red coats and
blowing horns and the like. It struck me as a pretty idea, quite like
Fitz-James’s pursuit of the stag in the first canto of “The Lady of
the Lake.” This gentleman rides mostly thoroughbreds. He told me that
he found it more and more necessary to ride thoroughbreds, or, at any
rate, horses as clean bred as he could get them, for the reason that
they are now breeding faster hounds than formerly. I wondered why they
should breed faster dogs unless at the same time they bred faster foxes.
[Illustration: From a painting by Richard Newton, Jr.
THE MASTER OF FOX HOUNDS, ORANGE COUNTY HUNT (NEW YORK), ON HIS
THOROUGHBRED HUNTER, GREEK DOLLAR]
I may add that the evidence in favor of fox-hunting is pretty strong,
to judge from the testimony of those who know most about it. A
celebrated hunter has expressed the opinion that all the time that is
not spent in hunting is wasted, and that is what men like Assheton
Smith and Anstruther Thompson really thought and have thought for two
hundred years. If that view is the correct one, the sport will probably
continue to exist and grow in this country. In the end Americans are
likely to have whatever is good.
With regard to the questions of type and taste, I may say here that a
certain deference is due to the opinion which the world’s best horsemen
have long entertained. We should not dismiss too lightly the views
of such men as Admiral Rous, Assheton Smith, and Mackenzie Grieve.
The last-named famous horseman, who lived in Paris and was a member
of the well-known Jockey Club there, I once saw in his old age in
Rotten Row. One afternoon in Hyde Park I noticed an acquaintance on
foot in conversation over the railing with some one on a black horse.
The horse, which had not a white hair, was a beautiful creature, of
the kind not usual in Rotten Row, having the graceful curves of the
_haute école_, preferred on the Continent, and attractive to the
finer Latin perceptions rather than the straight lines of the half-bred
English hack. The horse of the _haute école_ is very thoroughbred
in type, however, as this animal was. But perfect as the horse was,
I was even more interested in the man in the saddle. All he was
doing was sitting on a horse that was standing still, but there was
a singular grace in his manner of doing this. The pose and attitude
were beautiful. An old dandy, much made up, and dyed to the eyebrows,
there was in every detail of his dress, from his silk hat to his
patent-leather boots, a correctness and thoroughness that argued great
courage and spirit in a man of his age. The tight trousers of some dark
color were worn over Wellington boots, which a good London tailor will
tell you is the only way to have them set well. The frock-coat showed
the slender waist essential to good looks in the saddle. I wondered
if this waist might not be the result of pretty severe banting, being
sure that the plucky old fellow would have preferred death to abating
one jot his pretensions to the character of a perfect horseman. Greatly
interested in this survivor of the dandies, it pleased me to think
that he might in his youth have been the model from which Bulwer made
his sketch of Pelham riding in the park in Paris. Some days later,
happening to meet my acquaintance, I asked him who his friend was, and
he told me that he was Mr. Mackenzie Grieve. Before forming a final
opinion of the thoroughbred from the point of view of taste and beauty,
I should like to consult the shade of Mackenzie Grieve. His opinions,
whatever they were, he no doubt held strongly.
[Illustration]
When we come to speak of horses partly thoroughbred (and that is of
course the subject most interesting to breeders), I can say that I
myself have known numbers of them that were neither flighty nor weedy
nor wanting in physical stamina nor deficient in gaits or in looks. I
may take occasion to mention one or two of these. There was a big roan
mare, nearly thoroughbred, in my native county, which was sent to New
York and was for some years ridden by an eminent lawyer. She was a most
distinguished horse. No matter how many good horses this gentleman
has ridden or may ride, he can never forget Betsey, nor be in danger
of confusing her with any other horse. She was sixteen hands high, and
in condition would weigh nearly twelve hundred pounds. She had been a
favorite runner at county fairs and of course could gallop. She could
walk like a storm, she had a single foot that was a lullaby, she had a
perfectly square trot, she was excellent in harness, and she could be
ridden or driven by anybody. A little plain in the quarters, she had as
fine a neck, head, and shoulders as I ever saw. “She has a grand front
on her,” said the owner’s young Irish coachman, who knew the type. I
had at first some misgivings as to the appearance she would make by the
side of New York prize-winners; but when I went to the Riding Club and
she was brought out with the saddle on, her fine head carried high,
her large, prominent eyes awake, with her deep shoulder and sweep of
neck looking as though she had just descended from one of the classic
engravings of the eighteenth century, I wondered that I should have had
any doubts as to the appearance she would make when put in competition
with the equine upstarts of the present day.
Another of our mountain horses, also nearly thoroughbred, went to the
Riding Club. He was perhaps a little eccentric in temper, if one was
rough with him, and I think once he did run up the steps into the Plaza
Bank; but for gaits, sureness of foot, and physical endurance he was
remarkable. All his gaits were perfection, and, as for strength, I can
only say that I first rode him in 1890, then a full-grown horse, and
I believe he is still living, a pretty good horse yet. His purchaser,
a well-known New York specialist in nervous diseases, said to me, “I
am nervous, and he’s neurotic,” but he admitted that his trot was,
as he said, “the poetry of motion.” The animal came fairly by his
eccentricities of temper and his tenacity of life and strength. His
mother died not long ago at the age of twenty-five, and up to the day
of her death she would run away if you struck her.
[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch. Half-tone plate engraved by R.
Varley
A MORNING CANTER IN CENTRAL PARK]
It should not be forgotten that, whatever faults modern thoroughbreds
may have, there is a lot of good old-fashioned thoroughbred blood
behind such horses as I have mentioned--such blood as that of Diomed,
the winner of the first English Derby in 1780. Diomed, one of many
good horses imported here from England, was the ancestor of perhaps
three fourths of the horses now running in this country. Mr. Moses
Green, of Warrenton, Virginia, a man widely learned in pedigrees,
whose grandfather imported Diomed, writes me, “I have often heard my
grandfather say that he did not consider a race-horse one that could
not run four miles in good company in fast time and repeat.” One little
story of Mr. Green’s I may mention in passing. He once told me that he
had passed a considerable part of his childhood on the back of Diomed,
and the story is in a sense true, notwithstanding the fact that Mr.
Green, although by no means a young man, was of course born long after
the death of Diomed. It was the custom to spread the skin of an animal
under a mattress to keep the mattress from sinking in between the cords
of the bedstead, and the skin of Diomed served this purpose on the bed
on which Mr. Green slept when a child.
[Illustration: Drawn by Joseph Clement Coll
AT A COUNTRY HORSE SHOW]
The objection urged by thoroughbred men against American saddle-horses
is that they are of harness rather than saddle type. The objection
most commonly made to trotting-horses in general is, however, from the
breeder’s point of view. It is claimed that they do not breed true. Of
course, trotters can scarcely be said to be a family as thoroughbreds
and hackneys are. A thoroughbred[2] must be the progeny of animals
themselves thoroughbred. Trotters may become “standard” by performance.
Any animal that has trotted a mile in 2:30 at some recognized fair is
entitled to registration as standard. The offspring of parents that
are themselves standard by performance and not by birth are entitled
to registration as standard by birth. There are thus many standard
animals whose pedigree cannot be traced. Nevertheless, although we may
not know the pedigree of an animal that is standard by performance,
we know that he must be trotting bred, since no horse can trot a mile
in 2:30 that is not trotting bred. It must be admitted, however, that
trotters cannot be bred with the certainty with which you can breed
thoroughbreds and hackneys.
[Illustration: DELHI. An ideal type of thoroughbred saddle-horse. Owned
and bred by Mr. James R. Keene.]
[Illustration: SIR EDWARD. A fine type of thoroughbred hunter. Owned
and bred by the Hon. Adam Beck.]
[Illustration: TENERIFFE. An ideal standard bred roadster. Owned and
bred by Mr. W. M. V. Hoffman.]
[Illustration: MAHLI. A fine type of Kentucky saddle-horse. Owned by
Mrs. Thomas J. Regan.]
Thoroughbreds and hackneys, being, as families, older than trotters,
hold their qualities more intensely and are more capable of reproducing
them. In the matter of speed, however, you cannot breed a Derby
winner any more certainly than you can breed a two-minute trotter.
But the trotter’s inability to reproduce himself with certainty is
not altogether without its advantages. One would be sorry to lose the
variety in types thrown off by the trotter, which is a result of this
inability. There is no family which produces animals that have such
various uses as trotters, and in which a single animal will be found
to have so many good qualities. He will be a good saddle- and a good
harness-horse, and he will combine spirit with the best manners and
the kindest disposition. For instance, that wonderful animal sought
for with such avidity by ladies, a combination of opposite, if not
irreconcilable, qualities, “a bed by night, a chest of drawers by
day,” if he exists anywhere, can surely be found only among trotters.
In horses for use in harness one will get in the same animal, besides
speed, action nearly as good as that of the best hackneys, with a vigor
and endurance greater than theirs, and a head and neck that for quality
and fineness one will rarely see in hackneys, and will not often find
surpassed among thoroughbreds. We in this country are so used to that
head and neck that the English, who send us their best hackneys,
are careful not to send us animals that are deficient in quality.
Two years ago I saw at Bath, which has the best show in the west of
England, a pair of hackneys that won there and had been winning all
over England, very fine movers, but with plain heads and necks. They
would have been sent to this country had it not been for their want of
quality. Furthermore, a trotter will have, with the quality of a
thoroughbred, a sense and kindness, to find which among thoroughbreds
you must pick and choose.
[Illustration: ROSALIND
A famous saddle-horse and winner of many blue ribbons. Owned and
ridden by Mrs. W. A. McGibbon.
]
[Illustration: HERO
A fine type of heavy-weight Virginia trotting bred hunter and jumper.
Owned by Mr. Paul D. Cravath.
]
[Illustration: KENTUCKY’S CHOICE
One of the most famous registered saddle horses in the world. He was
sold for $7500, the record price for a Kentucky saddler. Owned by
Mrs. Richard Tasker Lowndes.
]
[Illustration]
A critic who objected to the trotter on account of his inability to
breed true has lately proposed to get a coach-horse from the Kentucky
saddle-horse, a suggestion which, if somewhat novel, seems to me a good
one. I fancy that this writer must have had in mind the pair of Forest
Denmarks I saw at the Lexington Fair three years ago. These horses were
by Forest Denmark, a registered Kentucky saddle-horse. One of them,
Tattersall, was not only a saddle-horse, but had been the champion
gaited saddle-horse of Kentucky. They were undoubtedly the best pair
in the State. They were afterward bought by an ardent adherent of
Christian Science from Texas for presentation to Mrs. Eddy, and were
sent to her. Mrs. Eddy, after trying them and finding them not entirely
amenable to influence, requested her Texan admirer to take them back,
which he did. I know the Forest Denmarks well. They are largely
trotting bred. One of them, the champion heavy-weight saddle-horse
in a recent New York Horse Show, the Cardinal, was originally a
harness-horse. The official spelling of the name of these horses, by
the way, is probably incorrect. The founder of this branch of the
Denmarks was a horse called Ned Forrest and must have been named after
Edwin Forrest, the actor.
The saddle-horses brought to New York are largely of mixed saddle and
trotting stock, and are often pure trotters. Trotters have the hock
action necessary to a comfortable trot under the saddle much more
generally than thoroughbreds. They have this action till they get down
to their very fast gait, when they are likely to begin to roll, which
is unpleasant. This does not always happen, however. There is now in
New York a gentleman who rides only trotters that have a record of
2:10 or thereabouts, and who finds such a trot the best of gaits. I
can believe that, from some such experiences of my own. About forty
years ago I used to ride, on the road from Madison, New Jersey, to
Morristown, a big trotter of Kimball Jackson stock that was fast for
those days, and was, besides, a powerful and particularly honest and
friendly horse. Going at a slow trot, he was perhaps the roughest
horse I ever was on. But when he got down to his fast trot, one did
not leave the saddle at all. I have never obtained such pleasure from
any action in the saddle as from that horse going at that gait. A
thoroughbred galloping on turf, measuring the earth like an animated
pair of compasses, with a succession of leaps and bounds, and going at
the rate of an express-train with scarcely more shaking to the rider
than a walk would give him,--so smoothly, indeed, that he might almost
carry a glass of water,--will of course give one delightful sensations.
But that trotting-horse was even better. You will notice in a trotting
race in harness that a horse, when put to top-speed, will now and then
give a leap forward of perhaps fifteen or eighteen feet, still holding
his trot. It was at the moment when the Kimball Jackson trotter, with
one of his powerful hind-quarters, assisted perhaps with an extra shove
off from the other, would propel himself forward through the air in
this occasional leap that I experienced the keenest delight that I ever
got from any kind of locomotion. I cannot forget those morning rides in
that pretty country on sunny October days, the air a golden fluid, and
the distant hills lying in cameo clearness, over which were chasing the
thick, sharply defined shadows cast by the clouds.
A very great merit of the trotter is his sense and kindness. His
education is happier than that of the thoroughbred. As a harness-horse,
he is nearer to everyday use than the thoroughbred. He is raced at
a more mature age, and he does not receive the cruel treatment of
the thoroughbred. Whip and spur seem to be inseparable from running
races. But a trotter may break if he is whipped severely, although one
sometimes sees the whip laid on pretty well in a trotting-race. People
in Europe, who have used our trotters, and even those who do not like
them, have told me that they found them remarkably sensible and kind as
compared with their own horses. Sense and kindness, I am sure, are not
only among the most useful, but among the most attractive, qualities
a horse can have. A certain trotting-bred horse of my acquaintance
has a soul such as I never knew in any other horse. I have tried hard
to trace his pedigree, because I wanted to know where that soul came
from, and to see it bred into other horses. But I have never been
able to find it. Perhaps some one who reads this may help me to some
information about it. He was a black gelding, 16:2 hands high, very
handsome, and was bought by Hudson from Bayless and Turney of Paris,
Kentucky, and sent to New York in 1896, at that time five years old. I
suppose he was bred in Bourbon County. I say I never saw such a mind in
any other horse. Horsemen have many best horses they ever knew. It is
not their way to be off with the old love before they are on with the
new. But I am sure he was, on the whole, the nicest horse I ever knew.
High-lifed as he was, he was full of sweet intelligence. In his dark,
melancholy eyes one read that “sad lucidity of soul” mentioned by the
poet. And he was so kind and considerate. A horse of great ambition,
his one fault was that he pulled; but he consented without the least
show of ill temper to the use of a pretty severe curb.
[Illustration: Drawn by Joseph Clement Coll
READY FOR THE PARK]
I could cite many examples of his sweet intelligence. Once when a
young woman upon a bicycle in Central Park was trying to ride us down,
and going, as an unskilful bicyclist will do, in just the direction
she wished to avoid, his efforts to keep out of her way, while at
the same time putting me to as little inconvenience as possible,
were charming--the horse evidently wondering whether a woman was a
reasoning animal. One could teach him something one day in fifteen
minutes, and the next day one could teach him as quickly just the
contrary. When he first came on from Kentucky, where he had been
single-footed, I found it hard to suggest a trot to him. I took him
to a big mud-hole in the bridle-path in the park, and for some time
worked him back and forth through it, evidently much perplexed as to
what I wanted of him. In mud six inches deep he could not throw his
foot out laterally, and had to bring it up vertically, and soon struck
a trot. I patted him on the neck, and he stepped out cheerfully with an
expression of, “Oh, is that what you want? I’d rather do that than the
other.” He could trot in much less than three minutes, and so must have
been trotting bred, but no thoroughbred had a better canter or gallop.
And with all the qualities above enumerated, he was magnificently
handsome. I gave the lady to whom I sold him the choice of two names,
Casabianca, in allusion to his docility and devotion and because he
would stand without hitching; and Solomon, because, as regarded his
sense and intelligence, she would discover that the half had not been
told her.
I think I have given pretty fairly the points of contrast between these
two families of horses. In harness there can be no question that the
trotter is the better. For use under saddle there is no doubt also that
the American preference is for the trotter. But we have seen that the
thoroughbred has his points of superiority as a saddle-horse. We should
preserve the thoroughbred, improve him, if one likes, eliminate his
undesirable qualities, but still preserve him. The saddle-horse of the
future will combine the good qualities of the thoroughbred with those
of the trotter.
[2] An animal, especially a horse, of pure blood, stock, or race;
strictly, and as noting horses, a race-horse all of whose
ancestors for a given number of generations (seven in England,
five in America) are recorded in the stud-book. In America the
name is now loosely given to any animal that is of pure blood and
recorded pedigree, ... whose ancestry is known and recorded for
five generations of dams and six of sires.--_C. D._
[Illustration: SECRET WRITING]
THE CIPHERS OF THE ANCIENTS, AND SOME OF THOSE IN MODERN USE
BY JOHN H. HASWELL
The art of transmitting information by means of writings designed to
be understood only by the persons who have especially agreed upon the
significance of the characters employed was known and practised by
the ancients long before the Christian era. It has many high-sounding
names, among which will be found cryptography, cryptology, polygraphy,
stenganography, cipher, etc. The first is what might be styled its
scientific name; the latter the one commonly used by the foreign
offices.
The oldest example of secret writing is the Spartan scytale. According
to Plutarch, the Lacedæmonians had a method which has been called
the scytale, from the staff employed in constructing and deciphering
the message. When the Spartan ephors, who, in the fourth century
~B.C.~, were the supreme power of the state, controlling alike
its civil and military administration, wished to forward their orders
to their commanders abroad, they wound slantwise a narrow strip of
parchment upon a staff so that the edges met close together, and the
message was then written in such a way that the center of the line
of writing was on the edges of the parchment. The parchment was then
unwound and sent to the general, who, by winding it upon a similar
staff, was enabled to read the message.
Various other devices of secret writing were practised by the old
Greeks and Romans. All served their purpose, and some of them were
remarkably ingenious. One, by reason of its being not only very
ingenious, but at the same time highly ludicrous, seems worthy of
mention. It was the one which Histiæus, while at the Persian court,
employed to advise Aristagoras, who was in Greece, to revolt. As the
roads were well guarded, there seemed to Histiæus only one safe way of
making his wishes known. He chose one of his most faithful slaves, and,
having shaved his head, tattooed it with his advices; then keeping him
till the hair had grown again, Histiæus despatched him to Aristagoras
with this message: “Shave my head and look thereon.”
Among the Greeks many systems of cipher were employed to transmit
messages during war-times. To illustrate one, let us suppose that the
English alphabet, by omitting the letter j, consists of twenty-five
letters; then arrange these thus:
1 2 3 4 5
---------
a f l q v 1
b g m r w 2
c h n s x 3
d i o t y 4
e k p u z 5
Represent every letter by two figures, by the intersection of a
vertical with a horizontal row. Thus we find that 11 represents a; 34,
o; 52, w; 14, d; and so on.
During the Middle Ages secret systems were employed in the operation of
telegraphic, military, and naval signals. Torches placed in particular
positions at night, flags held in position by day, guns fired at
particular intervals, drums beaten in a prearranged way, musical sounds
to represent letters, lamps covered by different-colored glass, square
holes diversely closed by shutters, levers projecting at different
angles from a vertical post--all these were adopted as signals; but
secret writing was in most cases a transposition of alphabetical
letters.
Schemes of cryptography are endless in their variety. Bacon lays down
the following as the “virtues” to be looked for in them: “that they be
not laborious to write and read; that they be impossible to decipher;
and, in some cases, that they be without suspicion.” Bacon remarks that
though ciphers were commonly in letters and alphabets, yet they might
be in words. Upon this basis codes have been constructed, classified
words taken from dictionaries being made to represent complete ideas.
In recent years such codes have been adopted by governments, merchants,
and others to communicate by telegraph, and have served the purpose
not only of keeping business affairs private, but also of reducing the
excessive cost of telegraphic messages to distant points. Obviously
this class of ciphers presents greater difficulties to the skill of
the decipherer. Figures and other characters have been also used as
letters, and with them ranges of numerals have been combined as the
representatives of syllables, parts of words, words themselves, and
complete phrases. Shorthand marks and other arbitrary characters have
also been largely imported into cryptographic systems to represent both
letters and words. Complications have been introduced into ciphers by
the employment of “dummy” letters or words. Other devices have been
introduced to perplex the decipherer, such as spelling words backward,
making false divisions between words, etc. The greatest security
against the decipherers has been found in the use of what might be
called a double code. One of the double-code methods is that after the
message has been put into, say, a figure code, to recode it in one in
which only words or consonants appear.
Variety is also of great importance. All the world might know the
principle upon which a cipher is constructed, and yet the changes may
be so numerous as, like those of the Yale lock, to be almost infinite.
No cipher can ever be perfect where the same letter, figure, or
character is always represented in the same manner; some mode must be
adopted by which an endless variety may be secured.
During the time of the Great Commoner, Sir John Trevanion, a
distinguished cavalier, was made prisoner, and locked up in Colchester
Castle. Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle had just been made
examples of as a warning to “malignants,” and Trevanion had every
reason for expecting a similar bloody end. As he awaited his doom,
indulging in a hearty curse in round cavalier terms at the canting,
crop-eared scoundrels who held him in durance vile, and muttering a
wish that he had fallen sword in hand facing the foe, he was startled
by the entrance of the jailer, who handed him a letter:
“May’t do thee good,” growled the fellow; “it has been well looked to
before it was permitted to come to thee.”
Sir John took the letter and the jailer left him his lamp by which to
read it:
Worthie Sir John:--Hope, that is ye beste comfort of ye afflicted,
cannot much, I fear me, help you now. That I would saye to you, is
this only: if ever I may be able to requite that I do owe you, stand
not upon asking me. ’Tis not much I can do: but what I can do, bee
you verie sure I wille. I knowe that, if dethe comes, if ordinary men
fear it, it frights not you, accounting it for a high honour, to have
such a rewarde of your loyalty. Pray yet that you may be spared this
soe bitter, cup, I fear not that you will grudge any sufferings; only
if bie submission you can turn them away, ’tis the part of a wise
man. Tell me, an if you can, to do for you any thinge that you wolde
have done. The general goes back on Wednesday. Restinge your servant
to command. R. T.
Now this letter was written according to a preconcerted cipher. Every
third letter after a punctuation mark, was to tell. In this way, Sir
John made out: “Panel at east end of chapel slides.”
On the following evening the prisoner begged to be allowed to pass an
hour of private devotion in the chapel. By means of a bribe, this was
accomplished. Before the hour had expired, the chapel was empty--the
bird had flown.
An excellent plan of indicating the _telling_ letter or word is
through the heading of the communication. “Sir” might signify that
every third letter or word was to be taken; “Dear Sir” that every
seventh; “My dear Sir” that every ninth was to be selected.
A system very early adopted, known as the “grille” was the use of
pierced cards, through the holes of which the communication was
written. The card was then removed, and the blank spaces filled up. As
for example: