“Aw, shut up, Sadness,” said Thomas.  “My friend Mr. Hamilton ’ll feel hurt if you don’t drink with him.”

“I cert’n’y will,” was Joe’s opportune remark, and he was pleased to see that it caused the reluctant one to yield.

They took a drink.  There was quite a line of them.  Joe asked the bartender what he would have.  The men warmed towards him.  They took several more drinks with him and he was happy.  Sadness put his arm about his shoulder and told him, with tears in his eyes, that he looked like a cousin of his that had died.

“Aw, shut up, Sadness!” said some one else.  “Be respectable.”

Sadness turned his mournful eyes upon the speaker.  “I won’t,” he replied.  “Being respectable is very nice as a diversion, but it ’s tedious if done steadily.”  Joe did not quite take this, so he ordered another drink.

A group of young fellows came in and passed up the stairs.  “Shearing another lamb?” said one of them significantly.

“Well, with that gang it will be well done.”

Thomas and Joe left the crowd after a while, and went to the upper floor, where, in a long, brilliantly lighted room, tables were set out for drinking-parties.  At one end of the room was a piano, and a man sat at it listlessly strumming some popular air.  The proprietor joined them pretty soon, and steered them to a table opposite the door.

“Just sit down here, Mr. Hamilton,” he said, “and you can see everybody that comes in.  We have lots of nice people here on smoker nights, especially after the shows are out and the girls come in.”

Joe’s heart gave a great leap, and then settled as cold as lead.  Of course, those girls would n’t speak to him.  But his hopes rose as the proprietor went on talking to him and to no one else.  Mr. Turner always made a man feel as if he were of some consequence in the world, and men a good deal older than Joe had been fooled by his manner.  He talked to one in a soft, ingratiating way, giving his whole attention apparently.  He tapped one confidentially on the shoulder, as who should say, “My dear boy, I have but two friends in the world, and you are both of them.”

Joe, charmed and pleased, kept his head well.  There is a great deal in heredity, and his father had not been Maurice Oakley’s butler for so many years for nothing.

The Banner Club was an institution for the lower education of negro youth.  It drew its pupils from every class of people and from every part of the country.  It was composed of all sorts and conditions of men, educated and uneducated, dishonest and less so, of the good, the bad, and the—­unexposed.  Parasites came there to find victims, politicians for votes, reporters for news, and artists of all kinds for colour and inspiration.  It was the place of assembly for a number of really bright men, who after days of hard and often unrewarded work came there and drunk themselves drunk in each other’s company, and when they were drunk talked of the eternal verities.