PARY IV

Bertram Halliday went home, burning with indignation at the treatment he had received at the hands of the Christian judge.

“He has used me as a housemaid would use a lemon,” he said, “squeezed all out of me he could get, and then flung me into the street.  Well, Webb was nearer right than I thought.”

He was now out of everything.  His place at the factory had been filled, and no new door opened to him.  He knew what reward a search for work brought a man of his color in Broughton so he did not bestir himself to go over the old track again.  He thanked his stars that he, at least, had money enough to carry him away from the place and he determined to go.  His spirit was quelled, but not broken.

Just before leaving, he wrote to Davis.

“My dear Webb!” the letter ran, “you, after all, were right.  We have little or no show in the fight for life among these people.  I have struggled for two years here at Broughton, and now find myself back where I was when I first stepped out of school with a foolish faith in being equipped for something.  One thing, my eyes have been opened anyway, and I no longer judge so harshly the shiftless and unambitious among my people.  I hardly see how a people, who have so much to contend with and so little to hope for, can go on striving and aspiring.  But the very fact that they do, breeds in me a respect for them.  I now see why so many promising young men, class orators, valedictorians and the like fall by the wayside and are never heard from after commencement day.  I now see why the sleeping and dining-car companies are supplied by men with better educations than half the passengers whom they serve.  They get tired of swimming always against the tide, as who would not? and are content to drift.

“I know that a good many of my friends would say that I am whining.  Well, suppose I am, that’s the business of a whipped cur.  The dog on top can bark, but the under dog must howl.

“Nothing so breaks a man’s spirit as defeat, constant, unaltering, hopeless defeat.  That’s what I’ve experienced.  I am still studying law in a half-hearted way for I don’t know what I am going to do with it when I have been admitted.  Diplomas don’t draw clients.  We have been taught that merit wins.  But I have learned that the adages, as well as the books and the formulas were made by and for others than us of the black race.

“They say, too, that our brother Americans sympathize with us, and will help us when we help ourselves.  Bah!  The only sympathy that I have ever seen on the part of the white man was not for the negro himself, but for some portion of white blood that the colored man had got tangled up in his veins.

“But there, perhaps my disappointment has made me sour, so think no more of what I have said.  I am going now to do what I abhor.  Going South to try to find a school.  It’s awful.  But I don’t want any one to pity me.  There are several thousands of us in the same position.