“I am of Indian blood, and can prove it!”

“You will not be disturbed.”

“Coralie——­,” the principal next called.  A thin girl of mixed blood and freckled face rose and said: 

“My mother is white.”

“Step aside!” commanded the White Leaguer.

“But by the law the color follows the mother, and so I am white.”

“Step aside!” cried the man, in a fury. (In truth there was no such law.)

“Octavie ——.”

A pretty, Oriental looking girl rises, silent, pale, but self-controlled.

“Are you colored?”

“Yes; I am colored.”  She moves aside.

“Marie O ——.”

A girl very fair, but with crinkling hair and other signs of negro extraction, stands up and says: 

“I am the sister of the Hon.——­,” naming a high Democratic official, “and I shall not leave this school.”

“You may remain; your case will be investigated.”

“Eugenie ——.”

A modest girl, visibly of mixed race, rises, weeping silently.

“Step aside.”

“Marcelline V——.”

A bold-eyed girl of much African blood stands up and answers: 

“I am not colored!  We are Spanish, and my brother will call on you and prove it." She is allowed to stay.

At length the roll-call is done.  “Now, madam, you will dismiss these pupils that we have set aside, at once.  We will go down and wait to see that they come out.”  The men tramped out of the room, went down-stairs, and rejoined the impatient crowd that was clamoring in the street.

Then followed a wild scene within the old house.  Restraint was lost.  Terror ruled.  The girls who had been ordered into the street sobbed and shrieked and begged: 

“Oh, save us!  We cannot go out there; the mob will kill us!  What shall we do?”

One girl of grand and noble air, as dark and handsome as an East Indian princess, and standing first in her class for scholarship, threw herself at her teacher’s feet, crying, “Have pity on me, Miss ——!”

“My poor Leontine,” replied the teacher, “what can I do?  There are good ‘colored’ schools in the city; would it not have been wiser for your father to send you to one of them?”

But the girl rose up and answered: 

“Must I go to school with my own servants to escape an unmerited disdain?” And the teacher was silent, while the confusion increased.

“The shame of it will kill me!” cried gentle Eugenie L——.  And thereupon, at last, a teacher, commonly one of the sternest in discipline, exclaimed: 

“If Eugenie goes, Marcelline shall go, if I have to put her out myself!  Spanish, indeed!  And Eugenie a pearl by the side of her!”

Just then Eugenie’s father came.  He had forced his way through the press in the street, and now stood bidding his child have courage and return with him the way he had come.

“Tie your veil close, Eugenie,” said the teacher, “and they will not know you.”  And so they went, the father and the daughter.  But they went alone.  None followed.  This roused the crowd to noisy anger.