Now and then out of the void flashed the great sword of hate to remind me of the battle.  I remember once, in Nashville, brushing by accident against a white woman on the street.  Politely and eagerly I raised my hat to apologize.  That was thirty-five years ago.  From that day to this I have never knowingly raised my hat to a Southern white woman.

I suspect that beneath all of my seeming triumphs there were many failures and disappointments, but the realities loomed so large that they swept away even the memory of other dreams and wishes.  Consider, for a moment, how miraculous it all was to a boy of seventeen, just escaped from a narrow valley:  I willed and lo! my people came dancing about me,—­riotous in color, gay in laughter, full of sympathy, need, and pleading; darkly delicious girls—­“colored” girls—­sat beside me and actually talked to me while I gazed in tongue-tied silence or babbled in boastful dreams.  Boys with my own experiences and out of my own world, who knew and understood, wrought out with me great remedies.  I studied eagerly under teachers who bent in subtle sympathy, feeling themselves some shadow of the Veil and lifting it gently that we darker souls might peer through to other worlds.

I willed and lo!  I was walking beneath the elms of Harvard,—­the name of allurement, the college of my youngest, wildest visions!  I needed money; scholarships and prizes fell into my lap,—­not all I wanted or strove for, but all I needed to keep in school.  Commencement came and standing before governor, president, and grave, gowned men, I told them certain astonishing truths, waving my arms and breathing fast!  They applauded with what now seems to me uncalled-for fervor, but then!  I walked home on pink clouds of glory!  I asked for a fellowship and got it.  I announced my plan of studying in Germany, but Harvard had no more fellowships for me.  A friend, however, told me of the Slater Fund and how the Board was looking for colored men worth educating.  No thought of modest hesitation occurred to me.  I rushed at the chance.

The trustees of the Slater Fund excused themselves politely.  They acknowledged that they had in the past looked for colored boys of ability to educate, but, being unsuccessful, they had stopped searching.  I went at them hammer and tongs!  I plied them with testimonials and mid-year and final marks.  I intimated plainly, impudently, that they were “stalling”!  In vain did the chairman, Ex-President Hayes, explain and excuse.  I took no excuses and brushed explanations aside.  I wonder now that he did not brush me aside, too, as a conceited meddler, but instead he smiled and surrendered.

I crossed the ocean in a trance.  Always I seemed to be saying, “It is not real; I must be dreaming!” I can live it again—­the little, Dutch ship—­the blue waters—­the smell of new-mown hay—­Holland and the Rhine.  I saw the Wartburg and Berlin; I made the Harzreise and climbed the Brocken; I saw the Hansa towns and the cities and dorfs of South Germany; I saw the Alps at Berne, the Cathedral at Milan, Florence, Rome, Venice, Vienna, and Pesth; I looked on the boundaries of Russia; and I sat in Paris and London.