University of California Berkeley 
 
THE VENGEANCE 
 OF THE GODS 
 
 AND THREE OTHER STORIES OF REAL 
 AMERICAN COLOR LINE LIFE 
 
 By WILLIAM PICKENS 
 Author of "The Heir of Slaves" "The New Negro," Etc. 
 
 Introduction by 
 
 Bishop John Hurst, D.D., LL.D. 
 of the African Methodist Episcopal Church 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE A. M. E. BOOK CONCERN 
 
 631 PINE STREET 
 PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
 
Copyright, 1922 
 
 By WILLIAM PICKENS 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 By Bishop John Hurst 
 
 One of the hardest things in the world to accom 
 plish is to get rid of a fixed idea. The fixed idea 
 frequently is the lunacy of otherwise sane minds. 
 When good, it is beneficial in its workings. When 
 evil, it is destructive and the injuries it commits 
 know no bounds. 
 
 The fact that a man differs in physical traits 
 from another does not establish his superiority. 
 Things external in human relations have but scant 
 value. The refining and spiritualizing forces are 
 those that count. It is a tremendously big price to 
 pay if, in order to prove his superiority, a fellow 
 has to resort to sharp practices, immoral schemes 
 and brutalizing standards. He is deteriorating 
 without knowing it. Germany aimed for a com 
 manding position in the world through material 
 success and military and individual efficiency. Her 
 leaders were obsessed with the idea of proving 
 by those means their superiority over everybody 
 else. They started as if to say, in effect, "Watch 
 us put it over. See whether we do not build up a 
 model system producing the finest result attained 
 anywhere in commerce and industry whether we 
 do not make Germany the leader of modern civ 
 ilization the most powerful nation ever known 
 to man." It took them fifty years to put the scheme 
 
4 Introduction 
 
 through, but they woke up to find all of it but 
 illusions and short-sightedness. Now they are be 
 ing un-educated from this foible, from this false 
 conception of life. There is hope for them. 
 
 But the process of un-educating one's self from 
 old habits and false notions and prejudices of many 
 centuries is most difficult. People thus affected 
 are frequently found reversing themselves. It is 
 a work of slow growth and almost interminable. 
 They need light and more of it every day. Writers 
 who devote their talent in furnishing material to 
 meet this condition render double service : they 
 help the blind out of his dungeon and build up hope 
 and expectation of a brighter day in the breast of 
 the sufferer. They are entitled to the encourage 
 ment and respect of those whom they serve. The 
 colored people must learn more and more to sup 
 port them and, by that means, hasten the dawn of 
 the social and spiritual redemption of mankind. 
 
 This small volume of stories explodes in a viva 
 cious and engaging style, for which its author is 
 so well known, the false philosophic and scientific 
 value of the doctrine of Race Superiority and the 
 way it demonstrates itself. The author points out 
 with great appositeness the base and abject leveJ 
 to which its advocates and patrons will descend 
 to maintain and prove their thesis, but, invariably, 
 with sinister results to themselves. We believe 
 and trust that it will meet with a hearty welcome 
 by all. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 FOREWORD 7 
 
 THE VENGEANCE OF THE GODS 11 
 
 THE SUPERIOR RACE 87 
 
 PASSING THE BUCK 105 
 
 TIT FOR TAT . ..117 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Painter and Picture 
 
 Who paints the picture, paints himself beautiful. 
 Colored people often complain that in American 
 literature the Negro characters are made either 
 hideous or undesirable or unheroic. The colored 
 people did not make that literature. People do not 
 present another race as beautiful and heroic, un 
 less that race is far removed from them in time or 
 space; or unless, as in the case of the white man 
 and the American Indian, the stronger race has 
 killed off the weaker and removed it as a rival. 
 The 20th century white man can speak romanti 
 cally of the Indians, of Indian courage, Indian war 
 and Indian love. But to the 18th century white 
 man, whom the Indian menaced from the neigh 
 boring plains, there was "no good Indian but a dead 
 Indian." 
 
 If the Negro wants to be idealized in a world 
 where the Negro is a considerable potential factor, 
 he must idealize himself, or else he must expect a 
 sorry role in every tale from "Mother Goose" to 
 Wells' "Outline of History." It is not simply that 
 the white story teller will not do full justice to the 
 humanity of the black race; he cannot. A race 
 must present its own case and ennoble its own 
 ideals. 
 
8 Foreword 
 
 The custom of representing the Negro in story 
 as either a clown or a villain, or else a faithful and 
 useful servant to some white person, has been so 
 universal that even the earlier Negro writers dared 
 not venture beyond it, especially when they were 
 dependent /upon white publishers. The colored 
 writer is now beginning to present his race un- 
 apologetically and with the full attributes of MAN. 
 
 When the small boy saw on the walls of his home 
 a painting representing a man as mastering and 
 subduing with his bare hands a strong lion, the 
 child asked: "Mother, how can that man whip the 
 lion so easily? Every time I read about lions in 
 Africa or see them at the circus, hundreds of peo 
 ple are afraid of one lion." His mother gave him 
 the full explanation : "My son, it is like this : those 
 lions did not paint that picture." 
 
 But we are not writing an essay on story-tell 
 ing; we are simply presenting to the reader the 
 four stories of this little book, with the statement 
 that the colored characters are so completely hu 
 man that some people would consider them un 
 natural. 
 
 The first is "The Vengeance of the Gods." The 
 author must do most of such work on the road 
 and in railway trains, on his knee in Jim Crow 
 cars or on a table in Pullman. This particular 
 story was written on a circle tour of the far west. 
 The first chapter was written in Spokane, Wash 
 ington, and the last in Indianapolis, Indiana; the 
 
Foreword 9 
 
 intervening chapters or parts of them in Tacoma, 
 Portland, Sacramento, Oakland, San Francisco, 
 San Jose, Vallejo, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoe 
 nix, Albuquerque, El Paso and other points in 
 Texas, and in Arkansas. It recalls many of the 
 author's boyhood recollections of the peonage- 
 infested districts of the last named state. 
 
 The second story, "The Superior Race," was writ 
 ten after the author had had a considerable sea 
 voyage. The scene is laid in Mobile Bay and the 
 Gulf of Mexico, and is built around an incident that 
 was related to him. 
 
 The third story, "Passing the Buck," was orig 
 inally called "Trapped/' It contains incidents 
 which will be remembered by many people who 
 attended the great Methodist Centenary Celebra 
 tion in Columbus, Ohio, 1919. It was written one 
 morning in a Pullman car crossing the desert of 
 the Dakotas and Wyoming. 
 
 The last story, "Tit for Tat," relates what ac 
 tually happened in the life of a colored regiment 
 from Illinois while it was seeing service in France. 
 The substance of this story was given me by a 
 former high officer of that regiment in a conver 
 sation at the Appomattox Club in Chicago. 
 
 All of these stories are facts and types, but not 
 of the kind that the white American will yet be 
 enthusiastic about printing, although he may read 
 them. WILLIAM PICKEMS 
 
 260 W. 139th St., New York, N. Y. 
 
THE VENGEANCE OF THE GODS 
 Blood or Opportunity? 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 "TWO TWINS" 
 
 There is an old unsettled war 'twixt blood and 
 chance. Heredity or environment? Which has 
 the major influence on the destinies of men? 
 
 The unnatural social and the illegitimate sex re 
 lations of white and colored people in the United 
 States furnish the best body of material through 
 which to investigate this problem. One of the 
 best illustrations of the power of environment and 
 at the same time the persistency of blood, hails 
 from the river lands of the State of Arkansas. 
 
 John Elliot was a wealthy plantation owner. 
 He held title to many thousand acres of fertile 
 cotton lands of eastern Arkansas in the last decade 
 of the nineteenth century. His farms were worked 
 by scores of Negro families, most of whom had 
 migrated from the Carolinas and Georgia in the 
 eighties. Elliot had advanced the railroad fares 
 to these families through his labor agents who op 
 erated in the older states. The heads of these 
 families had "made their mark" or signed their 
 
12 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 names to contracts for their entire families to 
 "work out" these debts on Elliot's estate. These 
 contracts were made and signed through agents 
 in the older states, and the "parties of the second 
 part" had no knowledge of the conditions of the 
 work to be required, beyond the general under 
 standing that it was farm labor. 
 
 Of course, Elliot had to furnish these "new 
 comers" their "rations." For most of them came 
 west in the winter, after the close of the farming 
 season in the east; and accordingly they had to be 
 supplied with food and clothing at the expense of 
 the new landlord even before steady work should 
 begin in the spring. This caused the debt against 
 them to mount rapidly, for the landlord charged 
 these supplies to their account at a profit to him 
 self of one hundred per cent or more. And al 
 though he was party to the contract, he was sole 
 keeper of all records ; and it was not necessary to 
 tell the consumer what he was being charged for 
 a gallon of molasses till the final settlement next 
 fall or Christmas, and not necessary then. 
 
 This system was the successor and heir of the 
 slave system. Elliot lived in "the Big House" on 
 a long and ample hill near the center of his estates, 
 while the Negroes lived in cabins of one or two 
 rooms, all over the great plantations, each cabin 
 being situated on or near the little farm that was 
 assigned or allotted to its occupants. Once each 
 month, on the regular "rationing day," all the 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 13 
 
 heads of these various tenant or peon families came 
 to the Big House to claim as much molasses, salt 
 pork, meal, dark-brown sugar, coffee and rice as 
 was deemed necessary to keep their respective 
 families alive for thirty days more. This system 
 kept them tied close to their master and periodical 
 ly reminded of their dependence upon him. 
 
 The landlord was perfectly secure in these ad 
 vanced outlays : the tenant was bound by this debt 
 and local law would enforce it against his very 
 person, spite of the Thirteenth Amendment. If he 
 sought to escape, any justice of the peace could 
 fine 'him and then jail him in default of payment 
 of fine. But of course the fine would be paid by 
 his magnanimous and benevolent (?) landlord and 
 added to his former debt, thus binding him the 
 closer. In fact it was better for the landlord when a 
 peon attempted to escape and failed, for after the 
 matter was reviewed by the "court" or justice, it 
 gave the aggrieved landlord a better claim, a sort 
 of adjudicated title to this Negro's brawn. 
 
 Thus the original "cost of transportation" from 
 South Carolina to Arkansas became an octopus 
 with ever increasing bulk and multiplying suckers. 
 Despair broke many a heart. Even the doctor and 
 his medicines had to be secured through this sys 
 tem. Chills and fevers attacked the unacclimated 
 new-comers arid they had to summon the planta 
 tion doctor, who got his pay, not from the tenant, 
 but from the great land-baron, who in turn charged 
 
14 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 this account against the tenant's account at the 
 Big House, with the usual profits. This doctor 
 who was not at all accountable to the tenant, 
 naturally gave himself the least trouble: he might 
 ride to the door of a cabin where black people lay 
 fevered and delirious within, and without dismount 
 ing from his saddle make a few inquiries, write a 
 prescription for medicine, hand it down and ride 
 away. 
 
 Small wonder that under circumstances such as 
 these some of the more thrifty and determined 
 immigrants would try auxiliary means to break 
 the bonds of this gripping debt-slavery, even al 
 lowing their women folk to serve as cooks or maids 
 or washerwomen to the white folk in the Big House 
 and elsewhere. 
 
 And this is how "Aunt Katy," now a woman 
 of middle age, had come into the family of John 
 Elliot as a maid-of-all-work. Twenty years be 
 fore, when she was a slim black girl of twenty, 
 she and her father and mother and' younger 
 sisters and brothers had become the debt-slaves of 
 John Elliot. They were of those wonderfully 
 virile black folk of South Carolina, whose mark 
 can be found everywhere in America today. They 
 escaped from the barren poverty of their native 
 state to find themselves in the rich cotton lands 
 of the great Arkansas "bottoms/" but also in the 
 coils of the octopus. All hands worked with a will, 
 even the little children being deprived of most of 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 15 
 
 their schooling. The oldest sister, Katy, was hired 
 out as house girl to the Elliots, lords of the estate. 
 "Aunt Katy," a title which the dignity and the 
 burden of more years had finally won for her, was 
 now a matronly-looking black woman with a bit 
 of gray about her temples. She had that clear 
 and beautiful black skin through which the red 
 blood was visible on the more prominent features 
 of the face. 
 
 Aunt Katy had a daughter, Essie, who should 
 not be described as yellow, but as of a rich cream 
 color decorated with vanishing rose tints, which 
 sometimes appear in the sun-lit eddies when the 
 powerful streams of black and white run into the 
 same channel. 
 
 And Essie, only nineteen years old, had a baby, 
 with dark hair, dark eyes, and skin white. 
 
 Three generations : mother, daughter, grandson 
 black, light, white. And yet, in law, they were 
 all black ; and in the wisdom of the same law 
 Essie, Aunt Katy's daughter, had no father, and 
 Essie's baby was fatherless. 
 
 And yet the stranger, to whom resemblances are 
 always more discernible, might have noticed that 
 although these two normal human creatures were 
 legally akin to nobody, they very much resembled 
 some of their neighbors. Essie was enough like 
 Mrs. Elliot, the wife of the landlord, to be her 
 daughter ; and Mrs. Elliot's baby looked like the 
 twin of Essie's baby. These little baby boys were 
 
16 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 six months old and just ten days apart in their 
 birth, the Elliot baby being the older. And they 
 were indeed so indistinguishably alike that one 
 day Mrs. Elliot, seeing Essie's baby clad in the 
 cast-off clothes of her own child, seized it in her 
 arms, and pressing it to her heart she inquired of 
 Aunt Katy pettishly : "Why 'have you put my little 
 angel into these old rags? I told you to throw 
 them away." 
 
 "That's Essie's not your'n!" said Aunt Katy, 
 in a tone not altogether kind. Mrs. Elliot almost 
 dropped the child into Aunt Katy's arms. Mrs. 
 Elliot had heard all about this child and knew well 
 the circumstances of its being. But this moment 
 of realization seemed to arouse the jungle woman. 
 She looked wrathfully toward John Elliot, who 
 sat in his easy chair, spying upon the scene through 
 the smoke screen of his pipe. He was the picture 
 of self-satisfaction and conscious mastery. And 
 when his angry mate turned upon him, all the 
 threatening storm of her sex gathered itself in 
 this one harmless bolt : 
 
 "As God lives, no good will ever come of this !" 
 To which John Elliot replied with a new cloud of 
 smoke, as if to thicken the screen and dodge any 
 second shot. 
 
 Then, as too frequently happens in such cases, 
 this indignant wife turned all her anger and fury 
 away from the really guilty party and upon his 
 helpless victims : 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 17 
 
 "And this is thanks, is it ? Katy?" forgetting the 
 mollifying Southern term of "Aunt." "We gave 
 you work and bread when my only brother was 
 here, and there is Essie. And now this from her, 
 and she my brother's own !" 
 
 She stopped short and shook with wrath. The 
 code of honor of her group forbade to speak plainly 
 and honorably her relationship to these people. But 
 Essie was her natural niece, her own brother's 
 child ; and Essie's baby was the half-brother and 
 apparently the very twin of her own child. These 
 plain things her proud tongue could not utter, but 
 the following came natural to her : 
 
 "You niggers all ! Take those clothes off that 
 brat, and never bring your daughter or this thing 
 near my house again. Let Essie work on the farm, 
 and we have plenty of coarse cloth for nigger 
 children." 
 
 With that she swept proudly away. John Elliot 
 had already withdrawn to the porch. 
 
 Meanwhile dark rage and the images of darker 
 resolves were sweeping the dusky breast of Aunt 
 Katy, like the shadows of storm clouds. She re 
 membered how twenty years ago she was prac 
 tically trapped and assaulted by this woman's pam 
 pered brother, and how this very woman had ex 
 cused and connived, and was certainly an accom 
 plice after the fact. And now Essie, the fruit and 
 one of the victims of the previous wrong, had told 
 her mother how this white woman's own husband 
 
18 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 had at first attempted to take advantage of her 
 through bribery and persuasion and coercion: and 
 failing in that, had finally used force to do this 
 thing. 
 
 And yet, continued Aunt Katy's memory, this 
 woman had kept her and her child Essie for twenty 
 years in the Big House. A few weeks before 
 Essie's baby was born, Mrs. Elliot had ordered 
 Aunt Katy to put the prospective mother into one 
 of the servant's cabins ; whereupon Aunt Katy had 
 also moved out to live with Essie although she 
 still performed her daily tasks at the Elliot's. 
 The baby had been born, and everybody had re 
 marked that it was "the very spit an* image uv ole 
 man Elliot." The colored people said that Essie's 
 baby and Mrs. Elliot's baby were as much alike 
 "as two black-eyed peas." 
 
 Time had passed, and Essie began again to go 
 back and forth from the cabin to the Big House 
 to assist in the work. Aunt Katy who spent most 
 of her time in and near the kitchen and dining 
 room, kept the little grandchildren with her. Un 
 der the strange power which the evils we tolerate 
 seem to acquire over us, Mrs. Elliot had apparent 
 ly become reconciled to all this, and Essie was as 
 formerly her hair-dresser and maid. But the mis 
 tress was less communicative, somewhat less con 
 descending and much more formal in her rela 
 tions with this beautiful outcaste creature, and 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 19 
 
 always dismissed her now as soon as the work was 
 finished. 
 
 In a few moments all this record unrolled itself 
 in Aunt Katy's heated brain. And it would not 
 have comforted the Elliots, had they remained to 
 observe the fire of her dark deep African eyes. She 
 hugged passionately the little nameless grandchild, 
 which, though frightened for the moment by the 
 storm that had passed with Mrs. Elliot, was still 
 unconscious of its own situation and immune 
 against the deeper significance of all these clash 
 ing forces, and was now pressing its soft baby 
 cheek against the dark face of its grandmother 
 and patting her neck with a tiny hand. 
 
 "No!" exclaimed Aunt Katy, in apostrophizing 
 defiance, "my Essie will not work in your fields." 
 Then hugging the baby closer: "You will not be 
 put among strangers. You an* Essie can stay in 
 the cabin : I will support you." And looking- in the 
 direction toward which Mrs. Elliot had gone : 
 "What can she do without me? I have cared for 
 her house for twenty years. Yes, long as I live, 
 he will support you, and Essie too. For if they 
 
 refuse to support you in the cabin " Her 
 
 tongue refused to utter the awful thought which 
 seemed to find it difficult to express itself even in 
 the sudden demon look of her face. This terrible 
 inspiration ran into a dry, jerky, inhuman laugh, 
 which so frightened the child that it clung the 
 closer about her neck.. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE TATTOO AND THE SCAR 
 THE TATTOO 
 
 Miss Ollie Price, Mrs. Elliot's younger sister, 
 who since her school-days had led the life of a 
 social "climber," and almost that of an adven 
 turess in the east, had at last become engaged to 
 some French sportsman, and was now back at her 
 sister's home in Arkansas to prepare for the wed 
 ding. She needed a maid, she must have a maid. 
 That was what everybody had in New York and 
 Washington. Mrs. Elliot told her that on all the 
 Elliot plantations there was but one person quali 
 fied for the position, Aunt Katy's daughter Essie. 
 Then she related to her sister all the circumstances 
 connected with Essie's banishment to the cabin. 
 Miss Price who had experienced some liberalizing 
 contact with the outside world, replied that it was 
 "too bad," and even referred to Essie as "the poor 
 thing." But then she "must have a suitable maid." 
 
 Essie was accordingly recalled from her exile 
 to serve again at the Big House. Expedience is 
 
22 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 master of many of our emotions and author of 
 many of our decisions. 
 
 Curiosity led "Miss Ollie" to seek an oppor 
 tunity to see Essie's baby. One day while Essie 
 was arranging her new Mistress' hair, Miss Price 
 was contemplating the face and figure of the 
 beautiful mulatto in her mirror. And perhaps 
 tenderness was vying with curiosity when she said : 
 "It must be hard to leave your baby so long. Bring 
 him with you tomorrow, and I think you will 
 work better." 
 
 "But, Miss Ollie, Mis' Elliot ." 
 
 "O, that's all right," anticipated Miss Price, "It'll 
 be all right in my rooms." And then with a tone 
 almost of command: "Bring him tomorrow." 
 
 The next day Miss Price was surprised almost 
 into speechlessness by the closeness of resemblance 
 between this child and her own little nephew. She 
 was agitated. By a strange fascination we often 
 seek after what will not comfort us. "What is his 
 name?" she asked Essie, as the little fellow traced 
 with his finger the figures in the wall paper op 
 posite her. 
 
 "We call him Jim," said Essie, blushing and un 
 comfortable. 
 
 "Jim!" called Miss Price, as if to test the mat 
 ter or to destroy a possible illusion. The little 
 fellow shrank at the strange voice, turned timidly 
 and moved around in the direction of its mother. 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 23 
 
 Her own nephew would run to her at the slight 
 est invitation. 
 
 The sure instincts of the mother caught the 
 meaning of all this curious interest. She was pen 
 sive and pale and silent as she worked all that 
 morning, and little Jim also gave the stranger lady 
 a wide berth when he moved about the room, as if 
 sympathetic with his mother's spirit. When she 
 went away at noon she did not bring him back, 
 and she remarked that he was right out in the 
 kitchen with "Aunt Katy," as she called her own 
 mother, where she could see him when necessary. 
 It did not escape her notice that Miss Price now 
 made no protest against his absence, and never 
 asked to see him and never even mentioned the 
 child again. It is hard to be consistent in a false 
 attitude. 
 
 Miss Price talked much about this child, how 
 ever, to her sister, Mrs. Elliot : "Suppose something 
 should happen! How could you make sure? Only 
 their clothes make it possible to tell one from the 
 other." 
 
 "Nonsense !" retorted the proud white mother, 
 "because you have been staying in the North, you 
 forget the difference between a white person and 
 a nigger. If the nails or the hair of the neck don't 
 tell, the very spirit will tell. Blood will tell ! Why, 
 if they were lost till they were grown, you could 
 tell the white man and the nigger when you 
 found them." 
 
24 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 But Miss Price was nonetheless skeptic. She 
 disclosed to her sister that she had learned from 
 a sailor associate in the east the art of tattooing, 
 and shocked that lady's honor and offended her 
 pride of race by proposing to tattoo little nephew 
 William as a distinguishing mark. As proof of 
 her skill she showed on her left arm a small tattoo 
 which she herself had done. The haughty wife 
 and proud mother rejected this proposal with an 
 air that was truly impressive of her faith in racial 
 superiority and "blood." 
 
 But that one sight of little Jim had stuck like 
 poison in Miss Price's soul. She could be seen 
 often brooding and gazing into the far-away when 
 playing with nephew William. She was trying to 
 prevail upon her sister to permit her to take the 
 child to France after the wedding. Meanwhile Mrs. 
 Elliot and her husband were summoned to the bed 
 side of her brother, the natural father of Essie, who 
 was dying in Atlanta. Miss Price readily consent 
 ed to assume the responsibility for the household 
 and the care of her little nephew. The Elliots were 
 gone for several weeks, what with funeral arrange 
 ments and what with looking after the brother's 
 estate. 
 
 If Mrs. Elliot had ever bathed and dressed her 
 own baby instead of leaving it entirely to the 
 servants, she might have noticed, when she re 
 turned from Atlanta, a mark under its arm up 
 near the body. This mark was irregular in shape 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 25 
 
 but might have passed for an M or a W, accord 
 ingly as one looked at it. But with her sublime 
 confidence in herself and her kind, she noticed 
 nothing. And the servants, who had been glad to 
 have "Miss Ollte" to relieve them of all service to 
 little "Willyum" for several weeks, saw nothing 
 and cared not. 
 
 THE SCAR 
 
 The wedding came to pass. The Elliots were 
 persuaded to take the trip to France with the bride 
 and groom. It was arranged to take Essie along 
 as maid to the whole party. She would return 
 with the Elliots, who would stay about three 
 months. Mrs. Elliot had consented to go only after 
 her sister in New Orleans agreed to come and be 
 the head of the place in their absence and take 
 care of the child. Ancl Essie had been reconciled 
 to going only after it was agreed that her own 
 mother, Aunt Katy, should have entire care of 
 "Jimmie." The Elliots also had every confidence 
 in Aunt Katy, but then it "would look better to 
 have some white person in charge here." That is 
 a religion in the South. Aunt Katy would be the 
 real head and the chief reliance. Indeed nothing 
 could have induced Mrs. Elliot to leave her child 
 or her house in the care of even her own sister 
 without the help of Aunt Katy, But altho a col 
 ored person may be the defacto head, the de jure 
 headship must reside in a "white person." 
 
26 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 This New Orleans sister could not come, how 
 ever, until some time after the wedding party had 
 left, and before the Elliots and Duprees set 
 sail from New York, they received the anxiously 
 awaited news of her arrival. She reported that 
 all was well at the Big House and that Aunt Katy 
 had taken excellent care of the interests of the 
 Elliots. She had met the new arrival and brought 
 little William in her arms, who was "the very 
 picture of health, and, O, so fond of Aunt Katy," 
 as the letter went on to say. 
 
 What had really happened was this : when this 
 strange aunt arrived, the child in Aunt Katy's 
 arms would have nothing to do with the new 
 comer but clung with both arms tight around the 
 black woman's neck, its cheek against her cheek. 
 The child seemed frightened when the stranger 
 touched it and showed no disposition to respond 
 'to her repeated invitations to "my dearest little 
 nephew William." The chagrined aunt did not 
 relate all this in her letter, for indeed she felt 
 ashamed to tell in detail of the very cold recep 
 tion accorded her by the heir to the Elliot estate. 
 Pride deals in half truths and camouflage. She 
 went on to say that she hoped soon to win the en 
 tire confidence and affection of the little master 
 of the place, altho they were strangers for the 
 present and she was allowing him to sleep with 
 Aunt Katy. 
 
 At this point in the letter, the former Miss 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 27 
 
 Price who was now Madame Dupree, parted her 
 lips and gasped ard was about to make some ear 
 nest comment, but subsided when the next line 
 went on to say : 
 
 "Do not tell Essie that a little accident hap 
 pened to Jimmie. He was burned the next day 
 after you left. He was not seriously hurt, but 
 the doctor says it will leave a large scar on his 
 leg. 
 
 "Aunt Katy says it happend in the kitchen. The 
 child pulled a hot stove lid down. Fortunately 
 William was not around, as Aunt Katy had sent 
 him out for a ride with the new nurse who came 
 that same day." 
 
 The letter repeated and emphasized it as a re 
 quest from Aunt Katy "not to tell Essie about it." 
 and said that the grandmother was much dis 
 tressed. This last statement seemed to produce 
 a complete calm in Madame Dupree's features, 
 and she only remarked: "Aunt Katy always would 
 have that young one hanging to her apron in the 
 kitchen." Then, as if to reassure herself: "And 
 did she say that it is the doctor's opinion that the 
 scar on the leg will last for life?" 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE DEMOCRACY OF BABYHOOD 
 
 There is one perfect spirit of equality in this 
 world, in babyhood. Titles, ancestors, blood, 
 wealth and social circles are not esteemed by 
 babies. Feature and color and caste do not vex 
 the social life of babydom. 
 
 Little William and little Jimmie were in their 
 second year of life. With their parents far over 
 the sea, and with their guardians, Aunt K-aty and 
 "Auntie," equally as far way, so far as the babies 
 were concerned, being- in distant parts of the Big 
 House, 'the two little fellows were enjoying each 
 other's society in the great dining room, without 
 reserve. Jimmie was dressed in home-made ging 
 hams and his feet were bare. An ugly scar of the 
 recent burn could be seen on his otherwise perfect 
 baby leg. William was dressed in blue serge, trim 
 med in white, with blue-and-white socks and black 
 pumps. 
 
 William selected the rag doll, which Aunt Katy 
 had made for Jimmie, seated it in the best chair 
 of his doll furniture set, ; and was feeding 
 "M'randa" some "soogar" out of a silver spoon. 
 
30 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 Jimmie in the meanwhile had the blue-eyed, linen- 
 clad, frilled-up French doll which Aunt Ollie had 
 given William, and was trying to compel this well- 
 dressed foreigner to do the menial work of shovel 
 ing the dirt from the dust pan into a teacup. A 
 large pot spoon longer than the doll was the "shub- 
 ble." And as the frilled-up Frenchman seemed not 
 to take hold enthusiastically and to be unapprecia- 
 tive of the dignity of labor, Jimmie was occasional 
 ly pulling its blond hair and slapping its face until 
 its blue eyes shook, while he lectured in the best 
 baby Brobdingnagian style. 
 
 After William's rag doll protege had indeed 
 much more sugar on the outside than on the in 
 side, as much of that article was sticking in 
 grains about its mouth and piled in heaps in its 
 lap and on the floor, in the manner of real babies, 
 William remembered to hang a napkin about 
 its dingy neck. He was much kinder to this rag 
 baby than was Jimmie to the fashionable French 
 man. Adjusting the napkin, he next placed on 
 "M'randa's" lap a table spoon and an individual but 
 ter dish running over with "soogar." Completing 
 this pacifying arrangement, he rose to his feet, 
 grabbed the coarse bonnet which belonged to Jim 
 mie, and placed it on his own head. He then turn 
 ed toward his playmate, who was still busily em 
 ploying extreme but ineffectual measures to in 
 dustrialize the aristocratic Frenchman, and beat 
 ing the air with his hands, he uttered, in sharp 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 31 
 
 accents which sounded like a series of commands, 
 the following vocals : 
 
 "Ah ! ah ! oo oo oo oo ! ee eeh !" 
 
 Whatever all that may mean in the secret codes 
 of babyhood, Jimmie understood it instantly and 
 perfectly. He looked up, and jumped from his 
 corner, dropping the indocile Frenchman into the 
 dirt of the dust pan. Then he ran and picked up 
 the cream-colored, blue-ribboned sailor hat which 
 belonged to William, and put it on his own head. 
 Hand-in-hand they now turned toward the door 
 and were just about to sally forth to some great 
 baby adventure, when in came William's New Or 
 leans Aunt facing them like an angry fairy: 
 
 "William !" and then she stopped, turned to 
 
 stone, as it were, by the sight which she beheld; 
 two little playmates in perfect accord and brother 
 hood, with not a thought of difference or caste; 
 William with his linens under Jimmie's coarse bon 
 net and Jimmie with his ginghams under William's 
 trim sailor. 
 
 The next reaction of the sophisticated grown-up 
 was violent. She flung the bonnet from William's 
 head and jerked the sailor from the head of Jim 
 mie. And again she was turned to stone when 
 those two heads were disclosed : they were so much 
 alike, evidently from the same mold. She looked 
 at the scar on Jimmie's leg and muttered some 
 thing about "providence." What conceit it is that 
 makes us believe that supernatural powers are 
 
32 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 allied with our littlenesses. Both children recoiled 
 before her scrutiny. Her own nephew still pre 
 ferred Aunt Katy at times, which somewhat 
 annoyed his aunt. The likeness of these two babies 
 had never before impressed her so deeply. In her 
 curiosity she took hold of Jimmie, turned him round 
 and round, looked alternately from him to William, 
 and examined the scar again. She pushed up the 
 wide gingham sleeves of the puzzled little fellow, 
 looking ever and anon toward William. And fin 
 ally, fixing her eyes for a moment on something 
 under Jimmie's arm, she muttered : "A birthmark 
 also." 
 
 Then leading little William with one hand and 
 carrying his defiled sailor hat in the other, she 
 went out of the dining room toward the parlors, 
 leaving Jimmie as if he were no longer in exis 
 tence. The latter instinctively resented this slight 
 by kicking over the rag doll and spilling her plate 
 of sugar, after which he pulled the napkin from 
 her neck and stood holding her by one leg as if 
 contemplating some much more terrible reprisals. 
 
 The New Orleans Aunt had not been conscious 
 of the dark face that had watched her actions from 
 the time when she came upon these two Utopians 
 until she spoiled their dreams and left Jimmie alone 
 and full of the will to sabotage. But thru the 
 opposite door which opened upon the old-fashioned 
 passage way leading to the kitchen, two eyes had 
 gazed upon her, eyes of white and black and 
 
The Vengeance of the Geds 33 
 
 fire. So Jimmie stood, holding his rag doll peril 
 ously by the leg and trying to solve the mystery 
 of the sudden and terrible power which had inter 
 rupted the normal course of his life and carried 
 off his playmate, when Aunt Katy entered, chuckled, 
 took him into her arms, and with rather more 
 affection than she had lately bestowed upon him, 
 she hugged him to her bosom and carried him off 
 to the kitchen. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE POWER OF CIRCUMSTANCE 
 
 No ; environment is not omnipotent, but it is so 
 almost all-powerful that it deserves the major con 
 sideration in the making of a man on earth. Here 
 are two babies. Three-fourths of the blood of the 
 one is from the same sources as three-fourths of 
 the blood of the other. And that other fourth of 
 blood is just human blood. In physical feature 
 they are like duplicates. But the divergence of 
 their ways on earth will carry them to differing 
 destinies. 
 
 And which is which? Why did Aunt Katy hug 
 little William so passionately when alone with 
 him ? And when alone with little Jimmie, why did 
 she croon so wierdly and almost compassionately 
 over him, and treat him with all the indulgent pity 
 of her race? William's aunt remarked the strange 
 fascination with which Jimmie seemed to hold his 
 grandmother. 
 
 And why had Aunt Katy done this thing which 
 "Miss Ollie" feared would be done, and which the 
 reader of this history must by this time suspect to 
 
36 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 have been done? Partly for fear and partly for 
 revenge. 
 
 For fear: because she had often heard John El 
 liot tell, with approval, of the terrible vengeance 
 wreaked by one of his brothers on "a little nigger 
 gal." It seemed that the little colored girl was 
 not much older than his brother's child whom she 
 was supposed to nurse and take care of; and that 
 by carelessness or childish neglect she had allowed 
 the little white child to come too near a boiling 
 pot in which soap was being made. The child 
 stumbled, overturned the pot and scalded itself to 
 death. The angry and brutal father then seized 
 the little nurse and "cut both ears off that little 
 nigger." All the other colored people had fled at 
 the sight, so that "nobody ever knew what became 
 of the rest of the little nigger gal," for not even 
 the parents of the colored child had dared to ad 
 dress any inquiries to the infuriated demon who 
 was responsible for her unrevealed fate. Aunt 
 Katy recalled this oft repeated story and remem 
 bered that ias John Elliot was leaving on the previ 
 ous day, he had said to her concerning William: 
 "Take good care of him, for hell will be too good 
 for any nigger if he gets hurt." And so, as the 
 stove lid fell on that little leg, what was Aunt Katy 
 to do when there was another pair of little legs 
 just like them, close at hand and perfectly sound? 
 
 For revenge : because in the innermost of her 
 soul she had always resented with deepest human 
 
The Veng-eance of the Gods 37 
 
 hate the outrage which John Elliot had committed 
 upon the innocence of her little Essie. Every slight 
 and every act of neglect or contempt which Essie 
 and Essie's child had suffered from the Elliots 
 and their kin, had deepened this hate and fed this 
 desire for revenge. Whenever John Elliot was the 
 offender, the inspiration to this deed had spoken in 
 her ear like a tempting devil. 
 
 So well when the Elliots returned from Eu 
 rope, William had become quite fond of his New 
 Orleans aunt, but looked strangely upon his pa 
 rents, which was "perfectly natural." He had to 
 be won over by his mother and father, but that was 
 soon done with a multitude of playthings and 
 goodies. 
 
 What did the babies care? 
 
 ****** 
 
 We next see these two children when they are 
 seven years old. How swift is the passage of 
 childhood, to the eye of the observer. But to the 
 child it seems longer, the longest period of life, 
 like great oceans of time. 
 
 In outward appearances these two little boys had 
 become less alike, so that now there was no mis 
 taking the one for the other. But if one disre 
 garded the illusions and veneer of this world's for 
 tunes and saw only their essential features, they 
 were still enough alike to be twins. Clothing and 
 the care of their bodies clearly distinguished them. 
 Besides, each had now a personality which could 
 
38 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 never be confcmnded with the other. William was 
 generally well-dressed, well-shod, pampered and 
 autocratic. Essie's "little nigger Jim" was clad in 
 home-made things or cast-offs, and had a temper 
 to fight and a disposition to carry away the play 
 things of the little autocrat. The last named trait 
 was "proof of his sect," as the colloquialism used 
 by Mrs. Elliot would have it. She often pointed 
 to the differences between these two little spirits, 
 especially in the presence of John Elliot, in sup 
 port of her theories about "blood," as if indeed 
 that was the only difference, as if they were other 
 wise circumstanced alike, when as a matter of 
 fact they were more nearly equally endowed with 
 "blood" than with any other thing. 
 
 But while William was an autocrat, Jimmie was 
 a revolutionist, a radical. Ever and anon was the 
 autocrat forced to call loudly for aid from the 
 greater powers against this unsubduable revolu 
 tionist. Aunt Katy, Essie and others of the serv 
 ants had often to succor the titled possessor of 
 the throne. Some of these encounters were nat 
 urally provoked by the arrogance of the little 
 autocrat, who was beginning to overhear the con 
 versations of his elders, and to understand that 
 between him and Jimmie there was some sort of 
 a gulf fixed, a gulf which he himself might cross 
 and recross at will, but which forever shut Jimmie 
 out. 
 
 The Russo-Japanese war was going on, and 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 39 
 
 when a great naval battle was imminent, John El 
 liot had remarked to guests at .table that the Jap 
 anese could never win because they were "too much 
 like niggers." This unpremised conclusion about 
 "niggers" went unchallenged, as usual. William 
 had listened closely to this table-talk. And so in 
 the afternoon, when he carried his bean-shooting 
 cannon and his uniformed card-board soldiers into 
 the kitchen yard to play war with Jimmie, he 
 Insisted that his side must be the "Rushins" and 
 and that Jimmie's side must be the "nigger Japs." 
 This was finally agreed to by Jimmie,"as nationali 
 ties were not so important to him. For Jimmie's 
 army consisted of soldiers of different sizes and 
 shapes and colors, which with the help of Aunt 
 Katy he had recruited with a pair of scissors from 
 old paper boxes, and a few faded, battered and 
 crippled, limbless or headless "Rushins" which the 
 opposing general magnanimously loaned him on 
 the eve of battle. And while Jimmie was setting 
 his motley army 'in battle array, it seems that the 
 "Rushin" general had the nerve to fire a shot at 
 them before the "nigger Jap" general "wuz ready 
 to give orders to shoot." In the heated parley 
 which followed from these oddly conflicting no 
 tions of the laws of war, the commanders came to 
 blows. And when John Elliot rushed from the 
 house with reinforcement for the distressed and 
 vociferous "Rushin," the opposing general had dis 
 carded the conventional weapons of warfare, and 
 
40 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 his left fingers in the curls of his antag 
 onist, was pounding him with his right fist and 
 with the rer^ilarity of drumfire. At sight of this 
 savage attax.**, John Elliot, one of the great pow 
 ers, rushed forward, seized the barbarian in the 
 back, gave him two hard spanks, then dropped him 
 and turned to console the rescued party. But in 
 stead of yielding tamely, the little Afro-Asiatic, 
 catching the great power for a moment off guard, 
 kicked him violently on the shin and retreated^at 
 top speed. Whereupon that infuriated superman, 
 tho more insulted than injured, uttered this fear 
 ful prophecy : "The little devil ! that nigger will 
 die with his boots on." 
 
 Jimmie was now completely outlawed ; all dip 
 lomatic and commercial intercourse was forbidden, 
 and never again was he to be tolerated on the 
 premises of the Big House, the stronghold of the 
 powerful land-baron, John Elliot. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TWO SCHOOLS 
 
 It is unnecessary to write the full story of the 
 education and development of these two human 
 beings. It would be but a history for which any 
 one who knows the conditions, might adduce a 
 hundred parallels. 
 
 The little outlaw, Jimmie, was never again al 
 lowed on the Elliot premises. But whenever Jo'hn 
 Elliot saw Aunt Katy alone, he always inquired 
 Interestedly after "that little rascal." Elliot sel 
 dom saw Essie : with the intense partizanship and 
 the sensitiveness of a mother, she had resented 
 the exclusion of Jimmie and gradually grown away 
 from personal service to the Elliots. She sought 
 other work, washing, ironing and sewing at home. 
 Meanwhile she married, unfortunately, one of the 
 male minions of Elliot's household, a tale-bearing 
 Negro, one of those seemingly unnatural but 
 ubiquitous products which spring up whenever one 
 race presses another race down. This miserable 
 wretch was continually filling Elliot's ear with evil 
 reports,, as to how: "Essie's spoilin' dat boy o' 
 
42 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 her'n, I'se tried to be a step-daddy to him an* 
 make some'n out o' him. But Essie teaches him 
 to feel he jes' ez good ez any white boy, an* I 
 know ain't no good cotnin' uv a nigger whut grow- 
 up thinkin'- he good ez white fokes." Not only 
 was Jimmie thrust further and further away 
 from the possibility of any favor at the Big House, 
 but once Essie had to conceal the child for nearly 
 all winter to save him from the terrible wrath of 
 John Elliot, after Jimmie had thrashed Master Wil 
 liam on the way home from their separate schools, 
 when their paths and their boyish wills happened 
 to cross. 
 
 These two children attended schools that were 
 not only separate but very different. William had 
 less than forty schoolmates, but two teachers, a 
 man and a woman, both college-trained people. 
 Jimmie had more than a hundred schoolmates, but 
 one teacher, a. man, who had probably gone to 
 school at sometime somewhere, but whose chief 
 qualification consisted of the fact that for years 
 he had helped John Elliot to recruit new "hands" 
 for the farm by inducing his illiterate and unwary 
 fellow-blacks in the Carolinas and Georgia to 
 "come west and make a fortune." William's 
 school opened in September and kept till May. 
 Jimmie's school was open for six or eight weeks in 
 the latter part of summer, after the crops were 
 "laid by," and again for six or eight weeks in the 
 dead of winter, between the end of the cotton- 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 43 
 
 picking season and the beginning of "breakin' 
 ground" for spring planting. William sat in a 
 schoolhouse that was fairly modern. Jimmie was 
 taught in a colored church building, with scant 
 light and board-shutter windows, which was rented 
 by the schoolboard for one dollar a week. 
 * * * * * * 
 
 A few years later William graduated from the 
 high school in Little Rock, to which he had been 
 sent after finishing the work of the local school. 
 Jimmie, now grown to "Jim," had been taken out 
 of school when he was in the "third reader," to 
 help his unfortunate mother and his shiftless step 
 father to earn a living. The stepfather and John 
 Elliot had agreed together that too much learning 
 would spoil any "biggity yaller nigger." 
 
 These two boys, now eighteen years old, still re 
 sembled each other, but not as closely as when they 
 were infants. Beings of the same genus or species 
 are more alike in the earlier stages of their de 
 velopment. Up to a certain period in their growth 
 the foetus of the human is even indistinguishable 
 from that of the ape. Long since had the face of 
 Jim ceased to be confounded in the mind of people 
 with the face of William. But the colored people 
 contended that Jim was much more "like the spit 
 o* ole Man Elliot." Jim was angular and sun 
 burned. William was rounded in feature and rather 
 brunette., and the proud Mrs. Elliot said that he 
 
44 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 bore the lines and complexion of her family, the 
 Prices, rather than those of the Elliots. 
 
 And now these two boys were about to enter 
 the two most important schools of their divergent 
 careers : William was to enter the State Univer 
 sity, Jim was to enter the State Penitentiary. 
 
 "Father, what has been done about the case of 
 that nigger Jim?" inquired William, as he took 
 his last breakfast at home before leaving to catch 
 the train. 
 
 "Saved him from gettin' lynched sendin* him 
 to pen' for four years guess they'll teach him 
 somethin' there" was the laconic reply. 
 
 "But, father, those boys told me that five of 
 them had Jim down, beating him, and that he 
 snatched a stick from one of them and knocked 
 the Brough boy's eye out while lying on his back 
 trying to beat the white boys off." 
 
 "Six niggers to one white man in this county," 
 commented the senior Elliot, "never do to let 
 one of 'em get away with a thing like that. But 
 
 if he hadn't been such a biggity nigger " and 
 
 Elliot looked far away as if dreaming, or remem 
 bering. "Never wanted to be treated like other 
 niggers, always in a fight. Essie's husband, Sam, 
 testified that Jim always led the nigger boys in 
 fights against white boys." 
 
 "I saw Essie yesterday, with her ten-year old 
 girl, Mary," said William, as his eyes moistened. 
 "They were very wretched; they certainly love 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 45 
 
 Jim. Somehow I felt very bad when I looked at 
 them." 
 
 "At which one?" asked Elliot, as he bit savage 
 ly into his food. But just then his wife gave him 
 a look which ended his remark. 
 
 "Both of them," said William, honestly, "but 
 especially Essie. Her flushed face and pleading, 
 suffering eyes made orie feel sad." 
 
 John Elliot looked furtively at William, as he 
 thought of Essie's beautiful little Mary. For the 
 first time he felt a deep sense of guilt and ac 
 countability. For it matters not what we are, 
 we always want our children to be the noblest. 
 
 After a few minutes o>f silence, William unwit 
 tingly showed where his unuttered thoughts had 
 been, by continuing them aloud: "And they say 
 that Jim's fight was about his little sister Mary. 
 The B rough boy and his gang had shouted insults 
 at her as she was going to school and ." 
 
 "Well, my boy," interrupted Elliot, "you must 
 be leaving to catch your train in two hours. Make 
 sure that you have all your things packed. We 
 expect you to make good in college. All we have 
 is yours, as soon as you are ready to take charge 
 of it. Your mother and I are gettin' old, you 
 know." 
 
 "Speaking of Essie's eyes," put in Mrs. Elliot, 
 who seemed to be unaware of Elliot's effort to 
 change the subject of thought, "speaking of eyes 
 reminds me of the look which Jim gave me as 
 
46 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 the sheriff was leading him away after his sen 
 tence. He frightened me, and it frightens me 
 every time I remember that look. I had really 
 never looked into his face since long ago, when 
 as a little boy he used to play around the house 
 here with you," and she directed her eyes at 
 William. And then, with that suddenness with 
 which some women can change from timid bird to 
 fierce feline, she looked reproachfully at John El 
 liot and continued: "But I just feel that no good 
 will ever come of the existence of that nigger, 
 for nigger blood will tell." 
 
 The embarrassment Avas relieved by a confusion 
 and rushing of feet from the direction of the kitch 
 en, and above it all the voice of Aunt Katy : "My 
 po' chile, my po' li'l chile ! You must not suffer 
 so, you shall not suffer so!" and Essie burst into 
 the Elliot dining room, her hair disheveled, her 
 face blotched with much weeping, and her left 
 arm around the beautiful neck of little Mary, who 
 clung to her mother and wept sympathetically. 
 Mary was of a shade between brown and yellow 
 and had very black and slightly wavy hair. And 
 as she stood clinging to the waist of the mater 
 dolorosa, the eye of the aritist might have seen 
 framed in that doorway a truer picture of inno 
 cence and beauty and of love and sorrow than in 
 a. thousand madonnas. 
 
 Essie, her eyes suddenly flashing out of their 
 watery depths and blazing like pools of fire, spoke 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 47 
 
 with the effrontery and the unnatural temerity of 
 madness : "John Eliot ! John Eliot ! My Jimmie, 
 he was just trying to save his little sister! You 
 know what ! God ! You know what !" 
 
 Elliot bounded forward angrily, as if to shut off 
 something which he feared was coming, but his 
 right arm was seized by William, who said pas 
 sionately: "Father! the poor thing is just crazy 
 about her boy, that is all. Let her go. Take 
 her away, Aunt Katy." 
 
 Something seemed to stir in Mrs. Elliot, and for 
 the first time in nearly twenty years she felt to 
 wards Essie as a real human and almost as a sister. 
 She put her arms tremblingly about the sad, mad 
 mother and said : "Poor girl, somehow I feel a great 
 pity for Jim, too. Let us bear it, and perhaps all 
 will be well." 
 
 The actions and sentimentality of his wife and 
 his son had disarmed and almost unnerved John 
 Elliot, and he strode impatiently and disgustedly 
 out of the opposite door. 
 
 "Come, my po' HT chile," said Aunt Katy, gray- 
 haired now, but erect, and with the same burning 
 eyes, "come, my baby," as she pulled along Essie, 
 now unresisting, "come home with yo' mammy 
 an' she will console you," and shouting defiantly in 
 the direction of the door out of which John Elliot 
 had gone, "Yes, I can console her!" And then the 
 dry mirthless laugh of hysteria or secret ven 
 geance, as. she led her child and grandchild away. 
 
48 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 Mrs. Elliot and William stood for a few mo 
 ments unconscious of each other, and then she, as 
 if waking from a dream, said : "Come, my boy, you 
 must get ready for your train." And he, as if 
 
 aroused from a trance : "O er yes, mother." 
 ****** 
 
 When Mrs. Elliot was returning from seeing 
 William off, she stopped her car when Essie hailed 
 her by the side of the road: "Mis' Elliot, I hope I 
 didn't hurt your feelin's," and she looked with such 
 deep and genuine compassion upon the white moth 
 er that the latter was puzzled. ''But we dearly 
 love Jim," continued Essie, "an' we will always 
 love him." 
 
 The somewhat mystified Mrs. Elliot ascribed this 
 to madness and replied sympathetically, "And I 
 will always pity him." 
 
 "An' Mis' Elliot, where is he gone?" 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "My er Master William," said Essie, holding 
 her breath. 
 
 "He has gone off to college for four years. The 
 poor boy felt very sorry for you, Essie, and for 
 Jim." 
 
 And Mrs. Elliot drove on to the Big House. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE TWO GRADUATES 
 
 William had spent his four years in college, and 
 Jim his four in prison. John Elliot had told Aunt 
 Katy that William was not to return to the plan 
 tation but would go direct from college to France, 
 where he would live with his aunt, Madame Du- 
 pree, and study for a year or two. But Jim was 
 coming home, and Aunt Katy and Essie, and Mary 
 who was now nearly fifteen years old, were pre 
 paring to receive him. In spite of what Aunt 
 Katy had told her, Essie still loved Jim, and Aunt 
 Katy loved him too. He was a part of their lives. 
 Had he not been their boy from babyhood? And 
 with all his waywardness, he had been affectionate 
 and obedient to Aunt Katy and Essie, and to the 
 beautiful little Mary he was big brother, worship 
 ful knight and hero. Nearly all his fights and quar 
 rels had been in defense of her. In the four years 
 of his absence she had greatly idealized this de 
 voted brother, for she did not share the secret of 
 the older women. Essie loved Jim maternally, but 
 she did not doubt the truth of the confession and 
 
50 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 disclosure of Aunt Katy. And she remembered 
 that while they were in France and before they 
 left New York letters had come from the New 
 Orleans Aunt reciting how little "William" would 
 have nothing to do with her at first, and saying 
 that she had to gradually win him from the apron 
 strings of Aunt Katy in the kitchen. And the 
 thing was plain on its face, when once you knew 
 'it : for there was Jim, angular, pale, and tan, 
 phlegmatic and vindictive ; while William was in 
 feature rounded and in color brunette, and sym 
 pathetic in disposition. But in spite of all, they 
 loved Jim, and were "killing the fattest calf," as 
 Aunt Katy expressed it, for his return. 
 
 There is no other mother heart on earth like 
 that which beats with African blood. It can love 
 the children of other mothers, even -those of the 
 oppressor, almost as dearly as it loves its own. 
 The Negro mother is, not in mere fiction, but in 
 very fact of flesh and blood and affection, the 
 greatest mother in the zvorld. 
 
 Jim met a royal welcome from these three. 
 Little Mary's father, Sam, was less cordial ; he had 
 never liked Jim. When Jim was arrested for fight 
 ing on account of Mary and for defending himself, 
 it was this tale-bearing step-father who had 
 sneaked around to the Big House : "Ah declare, Mr. 
 Ellyut, Ah allus wanted to do my dooty by Jim, but 
 he been de mos' onmannerrest boy. Ah try to 
 teach him dat if he is a bright merlatter, he jes* 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 51 
 
 lak other niggers. But he ain't got no regards fer 
 me, an' Ah allus feared his hate 'g'inst white fokes 
 gwine git him in trouble." And in court he had 
 testified : "Ah nuvver could make dat boy mine me ; 
 he wouldn't even go to Sunday school 'cause Ah 
 wuz de Soop'ntinder." And even" this humorless 
 court had laughed. 
 
 But Aunt Katy and Essie welcomed Jim with 
 embraces and tears, while the self-conscious Mary 
 looked on with moist eyes. To her he had always 
 been a hero, and for the last four years she had 
 pictured him in her imagination as bravely endur 
 ing some torture for the sake of his "Little Sis," 
 as he called her. But the creature whom she now 
 saw in the arms of her mother and grandmother, 
 was so different from the creation of her dreams. 
 He was cold and hard and unsentimental. The wel 
 come which had cost them all so much thought and 
 care and pains, did not seem to appeal to him. In 
 deed he spoke as if he did not expect to stay with 
 them but would go afar off. He showed tender 
 ness only when he put his arms about Mary's 
 shoulders and patted her head, saying: "It was all 
 for you, Little Sis,." If there be any sentiment in 
 us, we will love those for whom we sacrifice and 
 for whom we suffer. We can love them even bet 
 ter than they can love us, for self-sacrifice is both 
 the cause and the effect of true love. Mother's 
 love is the greatest love in the world, because 
 mother lays most upon the sacrificial altar. 
 
52 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 They prevailed upon him to stay with them. Such 
 true and loving hearts could win even Jim. He 
 seldom talked in the presence of Sam, but when 
 alone with the other three, he would often de 
 scribe bits of his experience and observations in 
 the awful state prison, telling of the rapacity and 
 brutality of the guards and keepers. He swore 
 violently whenever any one called the name of El 
 liot, so that Aunt Katy arid Essie and Mary never 
 talked in his presence about the people at the Big 
 House. But Sam, who liked to talk about "de 
 white fokes," would occasionally mention, testing- 
 ly, "Mr. Ellyut;" whereupon Jim would utter an 
 oath and seize his hat and leave the cabin. 
 
 Jim never spoke to Elliot. Elliot never spoke to 
 Jim. The ex-convict managed to get a job with 
 a neighboring planter, as labor was scarce, and 
 one day as he was driving a wagon along the 
 roadside, he met Elliot on horseback. The road 
 was so narrow that even a man on horse could not 
 safely pass a wagon unless the latter drew a bit 
 to the side. Jim drove straight ahead in the middle 
 of the road, ignoring the approach of Elliot, so 
 that he had to turn his horse down a steep em 
 bankment to escape the wagon. That evening Sam 
 kept eyeing Jim and hinting about work and wages, 
 and finally wound up: "I jes* happened by de Big 
 House. Our white fokes needs mo' han's, and dey 
 pays mor'n other white fokes, and Mr. Ellyut tol* 
 me to tell Jim ." 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 53 
 
 "Go to hell !" said Jim, as he reached for his hat 
 and walked out. 
 
 "Ah ain't been to no penitenchery," said Sam, 
 "an* ain't had hafT his opperchoonity to learn 
 nuthin', but I got mo' manners dan dat nigger. He 
 a wuss nigger dan he wuz fo' dey sent him off." 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Elliot was receiving long let 
 ters from Madame Dupree, telling of William's 
 arrival in Paris, of his studies and of the fine im 
 pression which he was making on the French peo 
 ple. When letters came from William, he invari 
 ably asked after Essie and her daughter and Aunt 
 Katy, and often made inquiries about Jim. Mrs. 
 Elliot was in the habit of reading these letters to 
 Aunt Katy in the kitchen or dining room, because 
 of the genuine interest which the latter manifested 
 in any news from "Master William." 
 
 One day after reading one of these letters, the 
 proud Mrs. Elliot commented: "I tell you, Aunt 
 Katy, altho nigger boys don't have the same priv 
 ilege as white boys, still if they had any ambition 
 to learn and work and do what they can do, they 
 might make their mothers happy instead of caus 
 ing them so much trouble. " Aunt Katy's reply 
 was a speechless gaze, which would have been elo 
 quent, had Mrs. Elliot been the wiser. If only 
 white people could read the minds of black people 
 
 . But one day Aunt Katy's patience suddenly 
 
 gave way under the unconscious attack which the 
 
54 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 white woman was continually making on the black 
 grandmother's secret knowledge and firm convic 
 tions : "Mis' Elliot, I don't b'lieve any mo' in this 
 blood business. If Jim had had the other chile's 
 chance, who knows? I heard you read one day 
 from Master William's letter that there was some 
 colored boys over there from Georgia an' South 
 C'liiia, an' that they done as well as anybody in 
 their studies. Perhaps those white people over 
 there act different toward colored people and give 
 'em a better chance. Essie says the for'n white 
 folks in Paris treated her nicer'n her own white 
 folks treated her, an' ." 
 
 "Katy !" shouted Mrs. Elliot, dropping the sav 
 ing grace of "Aunt," while her face reddened and 
 almost bursted, "at your age and with the training 
 you have had, you ought to know better. If God 
 had meant for your race to be like white people, 
 he would not have made you black ! And I'll bet 
 those niggers that William spoke of, are almost 
 white and have a lot of white blood ." 
 
 "Lot o' white blood!" shrieked Aunt Katy, "an* 
 so has Jim! He is certainly white, al-most." 
 
 Her eyes blazed, she was beside herself, she 
 was struggling against some inner urge to disclose 
 some awful history or utter some terrifying proph 
 ecy. Her very audacity amazed Mrs. Elliot, who 
 stood paralyzed by anger and wounded pride. Her 
 mind was struggling against the impossible task of 
 conceiving some adequate rebuke when Mary burst 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 55 
 
 
 
 in upon them : "O Aunt Katy !" as she called her 
 own grandmother, "O Mis' Elliot ! They are after 
 him again, bloodhounds, guns !" 
 
 Seizing the hand of the excited girl, Aunt Katy 
 made off for the cabin and Essie. As she rushed 
 out, she laughed the uncanny laugh and said: 
 "Vengeance of God!" 
 
 As the yelp of dogs and a few scattered shots 
 were heard, Mrs. Elliot mechanically paraphrased: 
 "The vengeance of the gods!" 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE COAT AND THE HAT 
 
 "The coat and hat were found in the cabin of 
 that nigger Jim," said the one-eyed Brough, "and 
 that proves he's the criminal." 
 
 "But the coat and hat are not his," suggested 
 John Elliot, diplomatically; "they are known to 
 be the property of some white man." 
 
 "Makes no diff'rence," snorted Brough, the mob 
 leader, "he's the nigger, and his name is hash this 
 time. He can't escape ; we've hemmed him in the 
 swamp. Not even his sympathizing kin will be 
 able to save his neck this time." 
 
 John Elliot was not to be thus 1 insulted, not even 
 by another white man. He reached for his gun : 
 "Say that I am right in what I think you mean, 
 and, damn you! I'll shoot you like a dog, you po' 
 white devil!" 
 
 "O, I mean Essie," the dodging coward quickly 
 replied, "she's trying her best to lie him out of 
 this." 
 
 "Yes," said John Elliot, compromised by this 
 cowardice of Brough, altho he knew that the in- 
 
58 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 sinuation did not refer to Essie. But with all the 
 easy presumptousness of the landowner class, he 
 continued: "And now you are going to shut your 
 mouth and hear me tell just what she does say 
 about it. Then you and these gentlemen," diplo 
 matically, "may do as you damn please. Essie's 
 a nigger, but her story agrees in the main points 
 with that of the white woman. The white woman 
 says that the man who stopped her buggy and as 
 saulted her, was white ; and that when he put her 
 back into the buggy and ordered her to drive on, 
 she heard another vehicle approaching from the 
 cross-road ; and that later she saw her assailant 
 going across a field, as if frightened away without 
 his coat and hat. Now Essie says that Jim was 
 driving that way and picked up a coat and hat, 
 which he brought home." 
 
 To relieve the situation an older member of the 
 mob now spoke up in B rough's stead : "I don't 
 mean to make any insinuations or insulting re 
 marks at all, Mr. Elliot, but I'm used to consist 
 ent lying on the part of niggers. The uppish kind 
 always help each other, and she's his mother, 
 and blood is thicker'n water." And John Elliot 
 winced. "The lady did say that the man was 
 white, but ain't Jim white?" And as the speaker 
 noticed John Elliot's gun-hand creeping, he added 
 exegetically : "I mean, ain't he a light nigger who 
 could be mistaken for a white man in the dark? 
 And yo' own darkey Sam says Jim acted suspici- 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 59 
 
 otts when he brought the coat and hat in, and soon 
 as Sam knew a coat and hat figgered in the case, 
 he came and told us." 
 
 "Come here, Sam !" shouted a third member of 
 the mob, "here, nigger, come and tell Mr. Elliot 
 jus' what you tol' us." 
 
 That frightened wretch came forth, or rather was 
 thrust forward from the center of the mob, which, 
 as a reward for his miserable lies, had held him 
 like a hostage and treated him almost as if he were 
 the criminal himself. They had hinted again and 
 again in his hearing that, if they did not catch Jim, 
 they might try their guns on "the first nigger they 
 could get their hands on." 
 
 Sam's statement, therefore, was more a plea for 
 his own hide than for any other purpose : "Ah 
 knowed it wuz Jim, he ain't my chile, you see" 
 and when he noticed Elliot's eyes batting fast, he 
 explained : "Ah mean, he's jes' only Essie's chile. 
 An' jes' ez soon ez Ah hyeahs 'bout de trouble, Ah 
 sez ter myself, sez Ah: 'Sam ain't gwine ter git 
 into no trouble 'bout dis boy.' 'Cause Ah done tried 
 ter make him behave lak a good nigger, ever since 
 Ah married his mammy. You see, he ain't my chile, 
 jes' only Essie's chile by herse'f erlone, Ah mean, 
 >an' it ain't my fault, white fokes, dat he ain't 
 raised right, an' " 
 
 "Hurry up, nigger !" shouted two or three im 
 patient men. 
 
 "Soon ez Ah hyeahd dat a lady wuz 'sa'lted and 
 
60 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 dat de white gen'mens wuz lookin' fer de coat an' 
 hat, Ah went straight an' tol' de white fakes. An* 
 Ah tol' his mammy atterwards, an' she done tol' 
 Jim. An' she sez he 'splain ter her dat he ain't 
 done it, but she tell him ter run 'fo' de white fokes 
 come. But Mr. Ellyut kin bear me witness dat I 
 didn't marry her 'till long atter Jim wuz borned, 
 
 an' ." 
 
 "Shut up, nigger, come on !" And the mob 
 dragged him away frightened almost unto death 
 for his life. Mr. Elliot stood silent. But was he 
 convinced or compromised? 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE MAN HUNT 
 
 Who can describe its fascination, and the mad 
 ness? Hunting wild beasts is not to be compared 
 with the hunting of a man. And once indulged in, 
 it is seductive, like drinking alcohol or eating hu 
 man flesh. There is more uncertainty and con 
 sequently more of the spirit of gamble in the man 
 hunt. The beast you can figure out too easily ; you 
 can tell just what he will do under a given set of 
 circumstances. It is more a matter of science, and 
 the sensuous animal is but part of your experimen 
 tal material. But a man, even a poor, oppressed 
 and imbruted devil of a man, has a wit like yours. 
 It is not so easy to figure him out, for he is also 
 figuring you out. He may, and he may not. His 
 psychology is not a mere calculable thing; it is a 
 thing that also calculates. You have to play more 
 of a game against the man. It is thought against 
 thought, scheme against scheme. Hunger and thirst 
 do not drive him from his refuge as readily as it 
 drives a beast from his lair. You must think and 
 guess and doubt, rather than plan and calculate 
 and feel sure. And paradoxically enough, some 
 
62 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 strategems can be used -against the man which are 
 useless against the brute : for the man has reason 
 and faith, ambition and sentiment. A camouflage, 
 a threat against his mother or a word from his 
 sweetheart might fool or rouse or tempt the man. 
 Sentiment might betray the human, where rigid 
 instinct protects the animal. 
 
 Colored men who were friends or acquaintances 
 of Jim, were compelled to go thru the swamp at 
 night, followed closely by armed white men. 
 These Negroes were ordered to engage in conver 
 sation, in which they had been drilled beforehand, 
 and which was calculated to betray the fugitive : 
 
 "Dem white fokes done got tired huntin' Jim," in 
 a loud voice. 
 
 "Ya-as, dey ain't doin' much night watchin' now, 
 didn't see none uv 'em where we entered de 
 swamp." 
 
 "Uh-huh ! If we could only run across Jim now, 
 we could help him out, couldn't we?" 
 
 "A'nt Katy done tol' me dis mawnin' dat she 
 got a hunderd dollars fer him to run off North 
 wid, if she kin git it to him." 
 
 Letters were also dropped in different parts of 
 the swamp and neighboring woods, purporting to 
 be from Aunt Katy or Essie or other colored peo 
 ple, telling Jim just when and where he might get 
 food and how he might escape. Once a report was 
 spread around that Jim's mother, Essie, was very 
 sick, and that Mary was dvino-. At another time 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 63 
 
 word was passed around that Jim was not the 
 right man after all, but that the right man had 
 been caught and lodged in jail. 
 
 The mob members, with all their cunning, were 
 making two fundamental mistakes : first, they 
 were using colored people, against their will, as 
 the agents and the medium of all these lies and 
 attempted decoys ; and second, they were at the 
 same time abusing, bullying and maltreating in 
 nocent colored people, so that no Negro could pos 
 sibly sympathize with the mob. It should have 
 been expected that under such conditions these 
 people, with their wonderful intuition, would use 
 all their cunning to foil the pursuers. 
 
 One day Sam was informed by -the mob that he 
 would be sent into the swamp at night to find Jim. 
 "O Lawdy Gawd, white fokes, dat nigger'll kill 
 me!" 
 
 "Well, he's yo' son, ain't he?" suggested Brough, 
 with a general "haw-haw !" 
 
 The idea might have been at first a jest, but the 
 instant and sincere terror of Sam was so delicious 
 to his tormentors, that when night came they made 
 good the jest and actually started Sam toward the 
 swamp at the points of their guns. Breaking un 
 der the torture, he shrieked aloud, foamed at the 
 mouth and tore at his own flesh. He was mad. 
 They shot him like a dog. 
 
 But if we fail to seduce a people or destroy a 
 man thru their vices, we may still attack them thru 
 
64 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 their virtues. The devil sometimes assails a man 
 via his strong points and makes his virtue his mis 
 fortune. So the man-hunters began to think : Per 
 haps these colored people are "traitors ;" perhaps 
 they are in touch with Jim ; they may be warning 
 him against our traps ; possibly these colored peo 
 ple are doing for this colored man exactly what 
 under similar circumstances we white people would 
 do for any white man, give him warning and 
 aid. There now, we have it : We must also fool these 
 people; they must be made to lead Jim into a trap 
 without knowing themselves that it is a trap. 
 
 That is, they would betray these people and this 
 fugitive thru their virtues. The colored people are 
 strong in sympathy, and when once they feel 
 deeply, in loyalty ; and Jim was strong in physical 
 courage and in self-sacrificing love for F.ssie and 
 Mary. "That's it," said one of the mob, "we'll get 
 him thru his womenfolks. We'll let the niggers 
 know that we're fixing to give the two wenches 
 hell tomorrow night, an' they'll be sure to slip the 
 word along to Jim. He'? got a lot o' nerve, and 
 that'll get him out." 
 
 "Yes, he always would fight for the gal," testi 
 fied the one-eyed Brough. 
 
 So the plot was laid. The mob, still calling itself 
 a posse and assuming all law, issued a decree that 
 Essie and her daughter should stay in the cabin 
 all the next day and night and that no colored 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 65 
 
 person was to go there under pain of chastisement 
 by the posse. 
 
 This had the desired effect : it aroused the sin 
 cere curiosity of the colored people. What was 
 going to be done to these defenseless women? 
 Negroes working around white people became all 
 eyes and ears. And members of the mob easily 
 managed to let their servants overhear bits of the 
 plan : "They're good-lookin' wenches an' the boys 
 are goin' to call on J em tomorrow night, a dozen 
 or so of the young fellows. Brough'll be with 
 'em, he ain't never forgot how he lost his eye." 
 
 "Haw ! haw ! An' he wants more'n an eye for 
 his eye, don't he?" 
 
 "An' after that the boys are going to burn the 
 cabin down." 
 
 "After that they won't be fit for nothin' but 
 burninV Some exaggerations were thrown in to 
 fire the imagination of the colored people. 
 
 The simple-minded, sympathetic black folk were 
 horrified. Calculations did not go amiss as to their 
 sentiment and endeavors now. They slipped the 
 news to Jim by way of "the grape vine telegraph," 
 even while the posse kept closer watch on the 
 swamp. For Jim was not in the swamp ; his col 
 ored friends had got him out of the swamp the 
 next day after he went into it. For many days he 
 had been hidden in Elliot's great barn and was be 
 ing fed from the kitchen of the Big House, with 
 out the knowledge of the Elliots, however. 
 
66 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 The character and courage of Jim also justified 
 the compliment which his enemies had paid him ; 
 for when he heard that danger threatened Essie, 
 and his "Little Sis' " for whom he had already 
 sacrificed his life, he resolved not to be kept away 
 from them by consideration of life or death or hell. 
 He believed that the mob meant to carry out the 
 diabolical plot against those whom he loved, be 
 cause the colored people who reported it to him 
 believed it. People who believe what they say, 
 (have a way of making others believe. But the 
 colored people believed it only because the whites 
 apparently had tried to keep them from getting 
 wind of it. Jim resolved therefore to rescue Essie 
 and Mary or die. He was watching for a chance. 
 He would \vait till dusk of evening. If by that 
 time he was given no chance, he would take one. 
 
 What was it that brought John Elliot wander 
 ing thru the great barn that afternoon ? Are there 
 unseen powers that sport with our destinies as we 
 manipulate the lives of lesser creatures? The barn 
 was nearly half a mile from the Big House. Had 
 the actions of some servant made Elliot suspicious, 
 or was his troubled and wandering mind leading 
 him? Was there some soul-liaison, unrecognized 
 by both of them, between this old man and that 
 son of his hidden in the hay loft? At any rate, 
 there came Elliot in his wide hat, long coat and 
 gray trousers. From his lair in the loft Jim could 
 see him. The fugitive's mind worked fast : That 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 67 
 
 hat, coat, trousers, they would be passports. The 
 hunted man is more dangerous than the hunted 
 animal. But was Elliot armed, as usual? Jim 
 evolved a plan. He climbed rapidly down and 
 walked out of the barn right before the astonished 
 eyes of Elliot. 
 
 "Stop!" demanded Elliot, reaching for his hip- 
 pocket. But Jim had passed out of the door. He 
 did not attempt to run but stepped behind the great 
 tree that stood in the barnyard on the side farthest 
 from the Big House. This looked pacific to John 
 Elliot, so he did not draw his gun: "Now, Jim, 
 you've got to surrender." 
 
 "Surrender hell !" said Jim. to Elliot's great ir 
 ritation. And he let his pursuer see him reach out 
 from behind the tree and seize a huge billet of 
 wood. This angered Elliot. Jim meant to anger 
 him. To enrage a man is often the first step to 
 ward overcoming him. 
 
 Out flashed the ubiquitous Southern gun: "What 
 are you going to do with that club, nigger?" 
 
 "I may kill you with it, you white devil !" hissed 
 the fugitive. 
 
 How the hot blood surged to Elliot's head. No 
 Negro ever said as much to a white man and lived, 
 at least not within the borders of Arkansas and 
 the memory of John Elliot. He was too angry 
 to reply to this threat and insult. He simply be- 
 gan to move around the tree brandishing his gun 
 and trying to get a good aim at the object of his 
 
68 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 wrath. This was the battle which Jim wanted to 
 provoke. He stuck close to the tree, while Elliot 
 moved around at a distance but did not risk coming 
 closer. The younger man moved easily in the 
 smaller circle ; the raging old man found it more 
 difficult to keep pace in the larger circle. How 
 exasperating it is for one whom we consider in 
 ferior to first defy us and then to outwit us. Fin 
 ally in a blind rage John Elliot fired two shots, 
 cutting the bark of the tree on his right and at 
 Jim's left, as the two men facing each other moved 
 in their orbits from right to left. 
 
 These shots were a signal to the quick-witted 
 fugitive. He was waiting for some such sign. It 
 indicated that his pursuer had become desperate, 
 and therefore indiscrete and less clear in judgment. 
 John Elliot had the gun. but cunning is the weapon 
 of the weak and of the unarmed. This was the 
 moment for the ruse : he hung his hat on the end 
 of his club, holding it in his left, so that Elliot 
 might see only the crown of the hat Another 
 shot rang out, a piece flew from the crown of the 
 hat, and Jim fell backward to the ground, slapping 
 the hat quickly on his head. He pressed his palm 
 over the rift in its crown and closed his eyes as 
 if in great pain. Elliot rushed forward: "It was 
 your own fault : I didn't want to shoot you." And 
 as he stooped to pull Jim's hand from the top of 
 his head, the prostrate man with the irresistible- 
 ness of the unexpected suddenly jerked both of 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 69 
 
 Elliot's legs from under him ; and as the latter 
 fell, the gun flew from his hand. The greater 
 agility of the younger man brought him first to 
 his feet and he got possession of the gun. He 
 ordered Elliot to go immediately into the barn. 
 Outwitted but haughty, Elliot refused to utter a 
 word, but he obeyed the command, for there was 
 a light in Jim's eye which no rational creature 
 would disregard. 
 
 Inside the barn, Jim for the first time in his life 
 said to this proud baron what both of them thought 
 to be the truth : "John Elliot, I 'am your bastard 
 son. That is the only reason why I am not goin' 
 to kill you. It is not because I think you deserve 
 to live nor that I fear to die. If I were not your 
 son, I would kill you for your treatment of my 
 mother. But if any harm comes to her now, or 
 to my sister I will kill you in broad daylight if 
 necessary, even at the door of the jail or at the 
 gate of hell, your own son with your own gun. 
 For the present I only want your clothes, hat, 
 coat and pants. Take 'em off. You can put on 
 these, if you want to." 
 
 Elliot, proudly silent, gave up his own clothes, 
 but appeared not to see the coat which Jim held 
 out to him. 
 
 "And now I'll tie you up in the loft, so you can't 
 get loose, but you can call for help later. I will 
 tell you when to call, and don't call too soon or 
 you won't get the help. You are to stay here all 
 
70 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 night. I have staid here many nights. Do not 
 call or notify any of the boys when they feed and 
 put up this evenin'. I will be watchin', and if I 
 see the least sign that they have found you I will 
 come out and kill you right before their faces. I 
 ain't anxious to escape and I ain't hankerin' to- 
 live. I'm tryin' my best to get my mammy and 
 Little Sis' away from here tonight ; and if we get 
 
 away all right, it may save you some trouble." 
 ****** 
 
 That evening after sundown but before dark, 
 when his colored peons were putting up their mules 
 and feeding and milking, Elliot could overhear 
 them discussing the man-hunt and Jim and him 
 self. He was amazed >at the accurateness of the 
 knowledge of these semi-slaves and reddened un 
 seen at some of the compliments he heard paid to 
 himself. But he uttered not a word and scarcely 
 dared to breathe, lest he innocently betray his in 
 voluntary hiding place ; for he knew that death, 
 fearless death, had his eye on him. 
 
 Night came on, and as her 'husband was not at 
 home by eleven o'clock, Mrs. Elliot phoned an 
 inquiry to the plantation storekeeper at the little 
 village square. She was informed that her hus 
 band had driven up in front of the store in the 
 earlier part of the night ; that he did not get out 
 but ordered certain provisions brought out to 'his 
 car, and told the clerk to tell Mrs. Elliot, if she 
 inquired, that he was driving to Augusta, twelve 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 71 
 
 or fifteen miles away, and might possibly not re 
 turn till morning. The clerk remarked that there 
 were several other people in the back of the auto 
 mobile. 
 
 Why had he not told her himself and earlier? 
 The wife had forebodings. "Where is Aunt Katy?" 
 "She went to see Essie and Mary, ma'm, d'rectly 
 after supper." Yes, Mrs. Elliot remembered hear 
 ing her vow that she would spend the next two 
 nights in the cabin with her "chillun, and see if 
 any po' white trash dared to touch 'em." 
 
 Mrs. Elliot retired and dreamed disturbing 
 dreams : William was a little boy again. He had 
 fallen into a deep well. Aunt Katy and Essie were 
 doing their best to rescue him with a long rope ; 
 but every time they got him near the top of the 
 well, some white person of a crowd who stood 
 near, would cut the rope so that W T illiam would 
 drop back, and the shortened rope would make it 
 more difficult for the struggling women to reach 
 him next time. Somehow, as is the horror of 
 dreams, the dreamer seemed spellbound against 
 rendering aid and dumb to protest, when finally 
 the likeness of John Elliot rushed up to lend a 
 hand for the rescue, and suddenly and as if against 
 his will a knife appeared in his hand and he him 
 self cut the rope short from the hands of the de 
 spairing women. And the dreamer was struggling 
 against her dumbness and numbness for freedom 
 to move or shriek, when 
 
72 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 "'Scuse me, Mis' Ellyut, fer wakin' yo' so 
 early," a servant was saying with the best effort 
 at the English, "but Mr. Brough is hyeah, an' he 
 sez he jes' hafter speak ter yo' at oncet." 
 
 What was wrong? Brough? A bad omen in all 
 this trouble for years. She hurried to dress par 
 tially, and went to the sitting room where she was 
 confronted by the one-eyed mob-leader and two 
 other hard-looking men. 
 
 "Pardon, Madam," one of them began as they 
 observed her honestly puzzled mien, "but we won 
 der if you can tell us where Mr. Elliot has gone 
 and what he has gone for." 
 
 This wounded her pride more than was intended, 
 for in very truth she did not know. She parried: 
 "And pray what is that to you?" as she eyed 
 Brough haughtily and suspiciously. 
 
 "Well, Madam, to be plain and brief," retorted 
 that worthy, "we've just driven to Augusta to make 
 sure, and we find that he or somebody just like 
 him left on the ten-thirty train for Missouri by the 
 Iron Mountain Railroad, and what's more," he 
 now spoke maliciously and with curling lips, "he 
 carried the old nigger woman and Essie and the 
 other little wench with him. Did you know they 
 were gone?" 
 
 This was a moment of trial for Mrs. Elliot. The 
 ring of triumph in Brough's voice annoyed her. But 
 it also aroused her Bourbon blood which resents 
 the encroachments of "po' white trash" even more 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 73 
 
 than the familiarity of "niggers." She deliberately 
 accepted the challenge with the simple reply : "Ifs 
 a lie!" 
 
 But when -a rude man has the advantage which 
 Brough thought he had, he can afford to be gen 
 erous, which he translates into being more delib 
 erately and more successfully cruel. So rudely 
 ignoring her contempt and disregarding her excite 
 ment, he coolly continued : "When I heard he was 
 driving to town with female parties in his car, / got 
 suspicious. I sent my nigger to the cabin and no 
 body answered when he knocked. Then we went 
 there after midnight and broke in. The wenches 
 were not there, and some of your other niggers 
 told us the old woman was not at the Big House 
 and that Elliot was not at home. We drove as fast 
 as we could to Augusta to investigate and ." 
 
 "O Mis' Ellyut. Marse Ellyut sez sen' him some 
 clo'es to the big barn quick, an' he done toT me to 
 tell yo' he'll be hyeah right away!" 
 
 The proud matron now looked upon the three 
 confused men with the anger of a tigress. No 
 words accompanied that look. No words were ade 
 quate to accompany it. Her scorn was ineffable, 
 but mingled with amazement, doubt and fear. Com 
 manding the excited servant to follow her, she 
 hurried into a room and returned with a suit of 
 Elliot's clothes. Brough and 'his men followed her 
 hurried footsteps to the barn, where they remain- 
 
74 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 ed outside with the others while she went in to 
 find Elliot. 
 
 When the landlord emerged from his humiliating 
 confinement, his anger was consuming: "The 
 damned brute caught me here at about three in 
 the afternoon. Tied me in the loft. Took my 
 clothes. Left his rags and ran off." He added 
 some words of fire but did not give the other de 
 tails of the evening's transactions. 
 
 "That explains all," said B rough quickly. "He 
 and the nigger women are on their way North. 
 We must wire the governor and have them head 
 ed off." 
 
 "They stole my car/'* said Elliot, who had been 
 tlaking with Mrs. Elliot, "they all ought to be sent 
 to jail, and that dangerous nigger Jim should be 
 lynched!" 
 
 "Right O!" shouted Brough. 
 
 And the man-hunt became statewide and almost 
 national. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE TATTOO AND THE SCAR 
 
 What a wonderful thing is organization when 
 inspired by a feeling of racial solidarity. No white 
 man save his immediate oppressors seemed inter 
 ested in Jim, the peon. But Jim, 'the "bad nigger," 
 the fugitive, the alleged rapist, attracted the at 
 tention of the governments of half a dozen neigh 
 boring states and of the whole white world thru 
 the associated press. Who can calculate the value 
 of the money and the time spent in efforts to ap 
 prehend this "criminal?" And who can refrain 
 from speculating as to how much more good even 
 the one hundredth part of that money and time and 
 attention might have accomplished, had they been 
 bestowed on the education and training of this 
 human being thru his childhood and youth? With 
 in a few hours the great press had made this un 
 fortunate and unknown creature notorious. A 
 special representative of the Little Rock news 
 papers had visited the scene and published thrill 
 ing myths of this almost superhuman demon, "a 
 very light-skinned Negro." Not a single word, 
 
76 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 however, was offered in explanation of his lightness 
 of skin. The papers naturally g-ot things a bit 
 mixed up, and told how *'Jim," a mongrel creature 
 with no surname, had betrayed the confidence of 
 his employer, John Elliot, a prominent white plant 
 er; had criminally assaulted this planter's little 
 daughter ; and that the child was hardly expected 
 to live. Then he was credited with having attempt 
 ed to foment a general uprising among the blacks 
 and overthrow the government of white people and 
 force upon them "social equality" and other hor 
 rors. Failing in this because of the courage and 
 generalship of one "Colonel" Brough, he had then 
 attempted to abduct the wealthy planter, John El 
 liot, as a hostage ; and had held him a prisoner for 
 several days until the insurrectionist was forced 
 to retreat by a sudden onslaught from Brough; 
 whereupon he fled in stolen "automobiles," com 
 pelling a few blacks at the point of his gun to 
 follow him. One far-away Northern editor, inno 
 cently reflecting all these lies and fictions, said that 
 "this hybrid, who is perhaps Caucasian and Indian 
 rather than Negro, is the Villa of Arkansas." 
 
 The governor of Missouri had dispatched officers 
 to Poplar Bluff to search every train and take this 
 outlaw, dead or alive. But the governor of Ar 
 kansas had trains stopped and searched at Hoxie 
 before they entered Missouri. In their haste and 
 excitement orders had been issued from Little Rock 
 only for the arrest of Jim, "a very bright mulatto 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 77 
 
 with Anglo-Saxon features, intelligent, probably 
 passing for white." But when Aunt Katy saw 
 them overpowering Jim, she joined promptly in the 
 fight and was also seized and held by the officers. 
 The lively fight put up by Jim and Aunt Katy at 
 tracted all attention to themselves, so that Essie 
 and Mary were unnoticed. In the confusion they 
 were left on the train and escaped into Missouri. 
 
 The captives were hurried back to the place 
 from which they had escaped. What a gala day 
 in all that country side when the news spread : 
 "They caught him!" What glad tidings: "They 
 got that nigger!" It was the merry greeting of 
 every little white school child : "Gee ! won't they 
 lynch him tho?" Nobody seemed to have the re 
 motest idea of courts, trials and convictions. It 
 was like as if a wild beast, dangerous to the whole 
 community, had be>en trapped, and everybody was 
 to go now and witness its slaughter and rejoice. 
 
 When Jim and Aunt Katy were brought back to 
 the little village or business center of the planta 
 tions, bells were rung, guns were fired, and every 
 body, even the colored people, turned out as a 
 matter of course to see. Returning heroes crowned 
 with the laurel of victory could not have attracted 
 more attention. But these were lodged in jail. 
 There seemed to be perfect harmony and goodwill 
 between the officers of the law and the people. A 
 certain spirit of preparation was in the air. People 
 ate their suppers hurriedly, if they ate at all. Yes, 
 
78 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 they were to witness the biggest event in the his 
 tory of that village, a double lynching, and "both 
 a nigger man and a nigger wench/' Poor old Aunt 
 Kaiy, to whose age the last few days had seemed 
 to aad as many years, had grown equally as much 
 in fame. Rumor had made of her a great sorceress 
 and really the arch-fiend in the whole deviltry, 
 whatever it was. For most of the gathering mob 
 could not tell just what the crime was. Of course 
 murder and rape and "little white girls" were mixed 
 up in it ; but just w'ho, when, how many and how 
 much, nobody had clearly in mind. But a con 
 viction and a determination possessed all minds, 
 and doubt would have been insanity. 
 
 And most of these people, nearly all of them, 
 did not feel that anything wrong Avas about to be 
 done, but something gloriously right or vindica 
 tory, almost religious and sacred. Generations be 
 fore, men had not felt that anything was going 
 wrong in New England when they burned wrin 
 kled old women for witches. Those who were not 
 to be the performers or participants, were to be the 
 audience or the "fans," as at ball games or bull 
 fights. The relative merits of hanging or shoot 
 ing or burning were freely discussed. Finally a 
 compromise plan was hit upon : they were to be 
 taken out to the back of Elliot's barn, to the tree 
 where Jim, as rumor now ran, had done his best 
 to "murder old man Elliot." There 'they were to 
 be 'hung and shot ; and then they would be dragged 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 79 
 
 back to the village square and burned. This pro 
 gram would satisfy all reasonable tastes. A huge 
 pile of boards, boxes, pine knots, and straw was in 
 
 evidence before nightfall. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Meanwhile what other fates were at work among 
 what other people in what other parts of tihe 
 world? William Elliot was doing service in the 
 French army and had requested his aunt, Madame 
 Dupree, to read all his mail from America before 
 sending it to him. This was partly a precaution 
 because his mother often sent messages in letters 
 to him for her sister, and also because he hoped 
 that his aunt might save him much time by reply 
 ing immediately to some of these letters. And so 
 it happened that comfortably seating herself in 
 the boudoir of her Paris home, Madame opened 
 and read the following letter, stirring and moving 
 herself occasionally to see if she were really 
 awake : 
 
 "Dere master William, i no you will fergive yo 
 own mammy, an i you because i am a por mizzer- 
 able creetur, an has nobody in this worl but Essie 
 an you, an Jim. An the one you thinks you be 
 long to, aint yo ma. She red all yo letters to me 
 an i no ther aint no coller line no race hate in 
 france, an if you no the truth you wood hep yo 
 own mammy an granny out from here, you not 
 niiss Elliotts babie i done it mysef. i can explaine 
 
80 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 to you Jim is hern. You wuz put in his place 
 when you wuz to little babes, yo sister Mary do 
 not no. i rite mysef, she direct envellup for me. 
 you lernd nouff in that free cuntry to no collor 
 don't count an you wont mine heppin yo own 
 mammy an me an yo sister Mary. The burnt 
 chile wuz hern mis Elliotts, i can prove, if you 
 sen for us. 
 
 "Essie nose; i jes tole her. but she wont rite 
 for fere hurtin you. She dont no i rite, you sen 
 letter in my name. 
 
 "yo own granma, 
 
 "KATY PORTER." 
 
 With the swiftness of those who are fired with 
 desperate purpose, Madame Dttpree made plans 
 at once to visit America and her sisters. Mon 
 sieur Dupree had often suggested that she do so; 
 and now for fear that she might change her mind 
 he refrained from expressing surprise or asking 
 any questions about her sudden decision. 
 
 S'he would sail tomorrow. She was afire she 
 wanted to telegraph William, but no, was it 
 true? And then she remembered how dark he 
 seemed, and what she had been praising in him as 
 a handsome roundness of feature. Could it be true ? 
 What had the other child become? He must be 
 a man as old as William. What good would it 
 do to prove this wretched thing? Should she not 
 drop it? It made no difference in France. She 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 81 
 
 remembered that she had, never spoken to William 
 about that tattoo, had never heard him speak of 
 it. Her mind ran repeatedly thru all the events 
 of her visit with the Elliot's over twenty years 
 ago 
 
 With all this tumult in her soul she sailed out 
 upon the tumul)tuous Atlantic. And then alone 
 with the great lonesomeness of being one among 
 many strangers, and like an atom on the inhos 
 pitable and interminable ocean, she became still 
 more introspective and doubtful of the wisdom 
 of her way: Should she not have seen William? 
 Should she not have asked the advice of Mr. 
 Dupree? The French people seem so cool and 
 sensible about such things. Should she not have 
 sent the letter to her sister? Or to her New 
 Orleans sister and gotten her viewpoint? Should 
 she not have destroyed the letter altogether and 
 then written Aunt Katy a threat in her own name, 
 or a complete rejection and signed the name of 
 William to it? That might have stopped Aunt 
 Katy from ever writing again. Perhaps she might 
 still do something like that. But how could she 
 ever explain her sudden coming? And how could 
 she ever keep such a secret anyway? O, the fas 
 cination with which fate draws us on to see and 
 to know fully. The victim tends to ensnare him 
 self. The criminal tends to become his own be 
 trayer, his own judge, and sometimes his own ex 
 ecutioner. 
 
82 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 There is humor in fate ; and irony and sarcasm. 
 When she reached Augusta, she engaged a man 
 to drive her out to "Elliot's Place." This man 
 having agreed to do so for a very moderate fee, 
 noticed her surprise and explained : "O, me an' 
 some o' the boys wuz goin' aout anyhaow this 
 evenin' some niggers air to be lynched out thare 
 to-night." To this she made no reply: it made 
 'her feel faint ; she remembered Paris and civili 
 zation : the contrast was humiliating. She mused : 
 "Can it be, O, can it be that my own nephew, 
 my real nephew is a member of a group that can 
 be lynched?" 
 
 The Elliots had been silent during the awful 
 preparations of jthat daly. Silence does \not al 
 ways mean consent ; it is sometimes the expres 
 sion of unwilling acquiescence, or helplessness, or 
 fear. The better South has been almost absolutely 
 silent during half a century of lynch law, and 
 even now is but barely audible. When Jim and 
 Aunt Katy were led by the mob to the tree back 
 of Elliot's barn, he went out apparently to pro 
 test, tho he knew the futlity of protest at this 
 stage of the proceedings. The causes of this pres 
 ent storm had been operating for days and weeks 
 and years. The seed of long ago had now become 
 a fruit. 
 
 After he had gone out, Madame Dupree came 
 in. She found Mrs. Elliot alone, pale and haggard, 
 and staring wildly from the easy chair in which 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 83 
 
 she sat and from which she seemed unable to rise. 
 She had been prostrated by the terrible events of 
 the day. and altho her sister had wired from New 
 York and phoned hastily from Augusta, she was 
 yet puzzled by the suddenness and the coincidences 
 of this visit. "O, mv good sister, you have come. 
 Ii is horrrible ; I always said no good would come 
 of it, and now Jim and Aunt Katy " 
 
 Madame Dupree, because of what was in her own 
 mind, anticipated and misinterpreted the allusions 
 of her sister, and interrupted: 'Then you know 
 about it? Then it is true?" 
 
 Mrs. Elliott, still busy with her own thoughts, 
 continued: "Have they told you? O, it is terrible' 
 It will spoil your visit ; I am sorry you came into 
 it." 
 
 Madame Dupree fell limp into a great chair, and 
 to relieve herself and her sister of the pain of 
 further speech, she handed Mrs. Elliott Aunt Katy's 
 letter, to show the source and the extent of her 
 knowledge of the case, and the cause of her unex 
 pected visit to America. 
 
 What pen can describe the infinite agony of that 
 minute? The stricken mother jumped to her feet 
 with the stare of madness in her eyes : "O God 
 of Vengeance ! I mean they are lynching 'him 
 now Jim William !" 
 
 Shots and yells rang out, as if to punctuate this 
 terrible announcement and interpret it to the be 
 wildered mind of Madame Dupree. Mrs. Elliot 
 
84 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 bounded thru the door like a bereaved mother 
 lioness, and her sister followed. When they reach 
 ed the edge of the mob, they could see dangling 
 under the tree a few feet from the ground what 
 had been a human body and was now a mass of 
 torn flesh and tattered clothes. Buckshot and rifle 
 ball had rioted thru this human form. 
 
 And there was Aunt Katy standing with her back 
 to the tree near the body, and holding the crowd 
 at bay with a double-barreled shot gun which she 
 had evidently managed to seize during the excite 
 ment attending the shooting of Jim. "I told you 
 to keep the old witch tied !" said a voice. With a 
 fierce look of the African jungle, more feline than 
 human, and with a coolness which for the moment 
 commanded universal regard, she was saying in 
 her dialect : "I do not want to kill. I do not want 
 to live. I mean to tell John Elliot : His own son has 
 been killed!" 
 
 "We know that," put in Brough. 
 
 "I mean Mis' Elliot's son. I can prove it. I want 
 to prove it to John Elliot and die ! She did not 
 know but I knew that her child had a blue mark 
 under its arm. This is her child. Look and see. 
 William in France is Essie's child. I changed them 
 when yo' child got burned, when you went off to 
 France. Ha! ha! ha!" And in the light of torch 
 and lantern she pointed an inexorable finger at 
 John Elliot. 
 
 The mob stood silent for a moment, as if under 
 
The Vengeance of the Gods 85 
 
 the spell of a real witch. A voice broke the spell : 
 "It's a damned lie !" It was the voice of John Elliot. 
 The mob. as if released from the spell by the magic 
 of this oath, was about to make a desperate move 
 on Aunt Katy. when a female voice put in : "I can 
 tell. I am William's aunt from France. I tattooed 
 his arm when he was an infant." 
 
 Ignoring Aunt Katy for the moment, Brough, 
 the mob leader, took a lantern and led the new 
 comer to the dangling figure. Trembling, she lift 
 ed the mutilated arm, pushed up the remnant of 
 a blood soaked sleeve, and fell fainting as she said : 
 "The tattoo! It is true!" 
 
 This sudden turn of affairs killed the enthusiasm 
 of the mob. And while attention was diverted 
 from her, Aunt Katy slipped away, and a heavy 
 plunge was heard in the great cistern that stood 
 near. 
 
 Mrs. Elliot never regained her reason. "Ven 
 geance of the Gods!" is her only coherent utter 
 ance. 
 
 John Elliot is opposed to lynching, and has spok 
 en sentiments concerning miscegenation, interrac 
 ial bastardy and "social equality," which make him 
 somewhat unpopular in Arkansas. 
 
 The boy in France, so it is rumored, has been 
 given a liberal portion of the Elliot money. 
 
 When Essie and Mary reached St. Louis, they 
 were arrested and their extradition was demanded 
 of the executive of that state. A great national 
 
86 The Vengeance of the Gods 
 
 organization of colored people and liberal-minded 
 whites immediately began a legal battle to pre 
 vent the return of these women to Arkansas. Their 
 case, however, was seemingly hopeless, as the gov 
 ernor of Arkansas had pledged "protection and a 
 fair trial," when suddenly the governor of Mis 
 souri announced that extradition was denied. Those 
 close to the governor say that he received a letter 
 from the great Arkansas planter who seemed to 
 be the center of the trouble and whose name had 
 been prominent in all dispatches, and that this let 
 ter said that it was all a mistake to charge the 
 two women with any connection with the crimes, 
 that they were innocent, and that they could not 
 secure justice and might be mobbed if they were 
 sent back. They are living in France with William 
 Elliot, a captain in the French Army. 
 
 Aunt Katy was never removed from the grave 
 she had chosen. The cistern was filled up with 
 rocks and soil, and the resultant crater is known 
 to-day as "Witch's Hole" where a great "conjure 
 woman" or sorceress is said to have disappeared. 
 
THE SUPERIOR RACE 
 
 Why is it that Jefferson D. Jones, Professor of 
 Anthropology in the Mobile Institute, is now so 
 singularly silent or noncommittal whenever the in 
 herent inferiority of the Negro is being discussed 
 in the various clubs of which he is a member, or 
 at the social functions where he is a guest? Pre 
 viously he has always taken the lead in these dis- 
 cusions. Indeed he had a hundred times demon 
 strated, anthropologically, that the Negro is not 
 only inferior but must forever remain so, "show- 
 ing conclusively," as a local editor said, "that al- 
 tho the theory of evolution may prove that the 
 white man, the nigger, the monkey land other 
 mammalians sprung from some common origin, still 
 the white man is the only one who has a soul, be 
 cause the white man keeps on developing, while the 
 monkey and the nigger have run into a sort of 
 evolutionary cul-de-sac." A Chicago magazine had 
 also published from the Professor's pen an elab 
 orate argument, aiming to show that the success 
 ful teaching of Negroes "proves absolutely noth 
 ing," but a little further down his logical page he 
 added, "it proves conclusively" that the superior 
 
88 The Superior Race 
 
 genius of the white man enables him to teach an 
 "inferior" anything that the white man knows. 
 The article consisted almost entirely of such conclu 
 sive logic. 
 
 But now the Professor is hard to draw into these 
 discussions, and is generally evasive in his answers 
 and commonplace in his statements. He has been 
 popular ever since he was elected to his professor 
 ship over a number of able competitors, some of 
 his beaten rivals being mean enough to assert that 
 his first name (Jefferson Davis) recommended him 
 to the trustees more than did his scholarship. 
 Whether that be truth or slander, it is known that 
 he almost always, and especially when appealing 
 for support or favor, writes his full name, Jefferson 
 Davis Jones. 
 
 But to the cause of the Professor's lack of en 
 thusiasm now when the Negro is being discussed 
 a dicussison so dear and interesting to a Southern 
 gathering when the Negro is shut out. Last sum 
 mer the Profesor by sheer accident ran head-on 
 into a fact, one of those hard rocks of experience 
 against which the ships of theory have ever been 
 and will ever be wrecked. This fact was a real 
 Negro, a six-foot black man named Nathan Turner, 
 employed at the wharf of the Munson Steamship 
 Line. The eminent anthropologist and cognomi- 
 nal descendant of the President of the Confeder 
 acy had never seen or known so much of the Negro 
 race in all the four decades of his life as he learned 
 
The Superior Race 89 
 
 thru contact with "the Turner nigger" in less than 
 four days. 
 
 Nathan Turner had been the talk of the "clubs" 
 about six months before ; at which time he had 
 been given the remarkably light fine of twenty-five 
 dollars in cash and thirty days on the chain gang 
 for disarming and whipping a white man who had 
 drawn a gun to shoot him, and the white man had 
 been severely reprimanded by the court for allow 
 ing himseslf to be drawn into a fight with an "in 
 ferior and vicious character" instead of appealing 
 to the officers of the law : for a policeman who was 
 at the scene of trouble as an onlooker was not in 
 vited by the white man to take a hand in the affray 
 until the "vicious character" had disarmed him and 
 thrown him to the ground, when the vigilant offi 
 cer at the call of the vanquished gentleman rushed 
 in, used his mace bloodily on the Negro's head 
 and hauled him off to the lock-up. This "vicious" 
 defence made by the Negro together with the light 
 sentence placed upon him and the severe reprimand 
 imposed upon the white man, almost caused the 
 black man to be lynched on the following night. 
 But a recorder's court in Mobile is no fool, and like 
 many other courts in similar cases the recorder did 
 not render judgment on the real issue, on the things 
 that were seen and witnessed : for most of the eye 
 witnesses were on Nathan Turner's side, and one 
 of them was his white employer, Captain Henry 
 Sims. .So the court admitted into evidence an ob- 
 
90 The Superior Race 
 
 scure and crumpled piece of paper on which some. 
 "Nathan Turner" had written to some unknown 
 person that there was a certain white man whom 
 he meant to whip if he ever bothered him again. It 
 was asserted by the lawyer of the white "com 
 plainant" (for the Negro is always the "defendant" 
 in such a case) that the "said Nathan Turner" was 
 the author and his client the victim of this threat. 
 Finally Turner secured the privilege of writing his 
 own name for the inspection of the court to show 
 that he was not the author of the document in 
 question. He signed habitually : "Nat. Turner." 
 The court, who had been reared and schooled in a 
 certain part of South Carolina where the famous 
 insurrectionary slave is still execrated, was seen to 
 frown like a storm, then redden like lightning and 
 literajly thunder out : "Nigger, is your name 'Nat 
 Turner'?" completely ignoring the period. The 
 unsuspecting black man replied : "People sometimes 
 call me that, and I sign it that way for short." 
 "Well," thundered his honor again and the light 
 ning struck, "you're guilty twenty-five dollars and 
 thirty days !" 
 
 What is in a name ? Is man fated from his birth 
 and christening? Just as Prof. Jefferson Davis 
 Jones's praenomina had been suspected to be among 
 his assets in life, so now Nathan Turner's signa 
 ture, tho absolutely different from the one that had 
 been ascribed to him, proved to be among his lia 
 bilities. Captain Sims, who was also a native 
 
The Superior Race 91 
 
 Southerner but who had had much experience with 
 actual instead of imaginary Negroes, was literally 
 white \vith anger at this style of justice, but was 
 impotent. He bestirred himselsf, however, to avert 
 the lynching that the newspapers predicted for that 
 night ; and in the face of sharp criticism he re- 
 employed Nathan Turner at the wharf as soon as 
 his term was finished on the chain gang. 
 
 The anthropological Professor and this real Ne 
 gro, two men of historic names, were destined to 
 share together an intensely human experience, 
 where Nature herself becomes the judge, and in 
 which names are really of no account and the fact 
 of individual superiority or inferiority rises to such 
 prominence as to entirely obscure all considera 
 tions of race or color. 
 
 Captain Sims, a fellow-clubman of the Profes 
 sor, invited him to go on a few days (Outing, 
 camping, fishing and shooting near the end of Mo 
 bile Bay. The Captain owned some land on an 
 island near Fort Gaines and had a gasoline launch 
 which he often used on these excursions. On an 
 outing of several days he always took his trusted 
 employee, the black man whom he had befriended, 
 Nathan Turner. 
 
 Turner was given a week's vacation and hired 
 to accompany the two white men on a two or three 
 days' excursion around outside the bay where the 
 Captain had often found good sport. The usual 
 equipment was taken, including several glass jugs 
 
92 The Superior Race 
 
 of water and enough food for two or three days. 
 The weather was beautiful and the waters smooth, 
 and the Captain yielded to the temptation to bear 
 rather far out and enjoy the open sea ; and they 
 got completely out of call and almost out of sight of 
 land. Altho Turner was busily engaged in manipu 
 lating the boat, he could hear some of the conver 
 sation between the two white men. Their talk 
 drifted thru various subjects into politics, and 
 thence straight to the inevitable, the Race Question. 
 As is the habit in the South they frankly expressed 
 their opinions of the Negro race regardless of the 
 ears of Turner (for he gave no attention whatever 
 with his eyes), as if they did not consider him a 
 part of the thing they were discussing. 
 
 To be sure the Captain disagreed politely with 
 many of the opinions of the Professor, and stoutly 
 asserted that, having known many Negroes per 
 sonally, he believed that they did exactly what 
 white people would do if on the same plane and 
 in the same circumstances. And with the charac 
 teristic concessions and apologies of a white man 
 in the Captain's position, he readily explained that 
 he by no means thought the Negro to be the white 
 man's equal and did not believe in "social equality," 
 but that he thought the Negro, even tho inferior, 
 should be given justice, and that the very fact of 
 his inferiority should make it easier to do him jus 
 tice, inasmuch as he could not be feared as a rival. 
 Then like a plain man of common sense, he tried to 
 
The Superior Race 93 
 
 finish the argument by a direct parallel with the 
 lower animals, and glancing at Turner, who was 
 all ears but no eyes, he continued: "Now take the 
 horse, r\ve are really not afraid of horses, there 
 fore we do not make laws against them nor allow 
 them to be lynched. Why, if the most vicious horse 
 in this state should be brought out into the public 
 square, chained to a post and burned alive, this 
 whole damned country would go wild. Somebody 
 would certainly get into jail and be ostracised from 
 good society if not sent to the penitentiary, and 
 every preacher in Alabama would rant about it for 
 months. But you put the best nigger in Mobile in 
 the place of that horse and most people in this 
 country will excuse it if they don't defend it." 
 
 For a plain mind like that of Sims this was an 
 unanswerable argument, but not so for the anthro 
 pological mind. The Professor belonged to that 
 class who may be convinced but cannot be con 
 verted. He was like the politician who remarked 
 that he had heard many arguments that could con 
 vince his reason, but that he had never yet heard 
 one that could influence his vote. And so he re 
 plied that he did not believe in "unnecessary" kill 
 ing of Negroes, but that the white race's "instincts 
 of self-preservation and sympathy of kind" would 
 naturally lead it into excesses whenever it was 
 threatened to be "overwhelmed and submerged by 
 an inferior element." And without deigning to ex 
 plain how a superior ten could ever be "over- 
 
94 The Superior Race 
 
 whelmed" by an inferior one, he went on to say 
 that the Negro is vicious and treacherous and is 
 always really waiting to get the advantage of the 
 white race. All this was said right in the ears of 
 Turner, as if he were indeed a lower animal and 
 without capacity to perceive his own relation to the 
 discussion. 
 
 "Well," rejoined the Captain, "I don't know much 
 about theories but I know a few facts. Take the 
 case of Nathan Turner here. I have known him 
 nearly all his life, and he is one of the best work 
 men in every sense of the word that we have ever 
 had ; but a few months ago, you remember, all the 
 papers of Mobile called him a desperado and 
 threatened him with lynching. And he would have 
 been lynched if I had not persuaded the sheriff 
 
 He was interrupted by a popping followed by a 
 sharp explosion from the gasoline engine. In a 
 moment the Captain and Turner were searching 
 about the machine to see what 'had happened. 
 "This pipe is bu'sted and the plug blown out," said 
 Turner. As the Captain stooped to look he slipped 
 and caught on his hand. "What in the hell is that?" 
 he exclaimed, looking at his gashed and bleeding 
 hand, "has the dern thing broken all the water 
 jugs?" For he had fallen on a fragment of glass. 
 "No," answered Turner, "here is one jug not 
 broken." 
 
 After a brief examination of the damage to the 
 
The Superior Race 95 
 
 machine, it was seen to be absolutely beyond their 
 means of repair. 
 
 "Nathan, how far out are we?" asked Captain 
 Sims. 
 
 "About a half dozen miles, I think," replied Tur 
 ner. 
 
 "Well," said Sims to the somewhat startled pro 
 fessor, "it is after four o'clock, so we are in for it." 
 
 With the characteristic confidence of the human 
 mind they expressed the opinion that some vessel 
 would pass in hailing distance before night and 
 pick them up or tow them in. The explosion evi 
 dently broke the Professor's chain of logic, for he 
 was less talkative ; or perhaps he was remembering 
 the time when he had heard of this Turner Negro 
 before and of his daring to whip a white man, 
 and how he himself at the University Club had 
 been inspired by the incident to discourse anthro 
 pologically on the Negro race and to denounce 
 Turner as "one of those vicious brutes who ought 
 not to be at large." At any rate the suspicion arose 
 in his mind that perhaps this Negro out of resent 
 ment to what he had overheard caused the mach 
 inery to break on purpose, and he hinted that sus 
 picion to Sims. But the Captain who in his present 
 predicament was not so patient with anthropology 
 as he had been, gave him an emphatic "No" and 
 added almost curtly that he would trust Nathan as 
 far as he would any white man of his acquaintance. 
 
 At six in the evening they ate lunch and drank 
 
96 The Superior Race 
 
 water, still expecting succor. Consistent with the 
 customs of their civilization the Negro was doled 
 out a portion after the white men had entirely fin 
 ished. 
 
 After lunch they all waited in silence, as if each 
 hesitated to confess to the others his waning hope 
 for being picked up that night. Turner broke the 
 silence between seven and eight by calling atten 
 tion to a rising cloud in the northwest and the stiff 
 ening breeze. He suggested that they unroll the 
 tarpaulin and fasten it over the boat as a precau 
 tion against rain and perhaps spray. Hardly had 
 they done this when half of the sky was covered 
 with cloud and the wind was causing small white- 
 caps on the waves. It was evident that they were 
 being blown further and further out to sea. The 
 sky grew darker, the wind blew harder. They 
 were, of course, helpless as to whither they were 
 drifting, but Turner took the rudder and "trimmed" 
 the boat as best he could to keep it from capsizing 
 and to keep the water out, meanwhile issuing or 
 ders to his comrades in danger as if he had become 
 their commander by appointment of Nature. These 
 orders were implicitly obeyed and instructions even 
 asked for by the other two men. Perhaps the 
 Professor consoled himself with the useful logic 
 that there is no use in standing upon technicalities 
 since all men are the same color in the dark. 
 
 After being driven and beaten about all night 
 in terror of their lives, soaked with sea water, thev 
 
The Superior Race 97 
 
 met in the morning a dead calm almost as suddenly 
 as they had encountered the storm on the evening 
 before. The Professor looked ten years older than 
 yesterday, with his bedraggled longish hair and 
 clean-shaven sallow face. "I wonder where in the 
 world we are," he ejaculated. 
 
 "We must be somewhere in the middle of the 
 Gulf, judging by the rate at which we were blown 
 along/' said Captain Sims, feigning courage by his 
 exaggeration. "I suppose we need food after such 
 a hard fight, but we must be careful with bread and 
 water, for we may need what we have for several 
 days yet." So saying he arranged three small 
 lunches, and as if the wind had really blown them 
 far enough from the center of their peculiar civili 
 zation to allow them immunity from its stern man 
 dates and iron customs, he said : "Come on, Nathan, 
 let's all eat. I don't know what would have hap 
 pened without Nathan ; his head is as cool as the 
 wind." 
 
 The dead calm continued; the sky became clear 
 and the day warm. All day and all night and until 
 the middle of the next day they waited, but nothing 
 human was seen above their horizon outside the 
 bounds of their little boat. The sea was almost 
 like glass for smoothness and the sky was hot and 
 hazy. There was not much food ; some of it got wet 
 and spoiled; and the water was getting low in the 
 jug, tho they partook of it very sparingly. They 
 had planned so that one of them was awake all the 
 
98 The Superior Race 
 
 time on the lookout for succor, and Nathan Turner 
 did most of the Captain's watching, for the latter 
 was rather sick and suspected ptomaine poisoning. 
 
 On the afternoon of this second day following 
 the storm the Negro several times noticed the two 
 white men in secret and earnest conversation in 
 which the Professor seemed to be the aggressor and 
 the Captain the objector. The quick instinct of 
 the Negro led him to suspect that this conversation 
 in some way related to him, for what other 
 secret could interest two white men in the present 
 situation? At one time when they had their heads 
 together he noticed them direct their eyes and evi 
 dently their conversation to the small quantity of 
 water in the jug. Later in the afternoon he saw 
 the Captain frown -and say to the importunate 
 Professor something of which Turner could catch 
 only the last words, "saved us already and may 
 be our dependence yet." Turner was not certain 
 whether these words referred to him or to the 
 water, but in either case he concluded that the 
 scarcity of food and water was the cause of the 
 anxiety, and that inasmuch as the conversation was 
 secreted from him it must be his share in these 
 necessaries that was under debate. White people 
 usually discuss the Negro's share with the Negro 
 absent. 
 
 So far his reasoning was correct, but it might 
 have alarmed him had he guessed what stern meas 
 ure the Professor was urging the Captain to em- 
 
The Superior Race 99 
 
 ploy in order to secure the Negro's share of bread 
 and water for themselves, in the hope that even a 
 day or an hour more of life might cause the two 
 of them to be saved. He noticed, however, that 
 the guns and hunting knives were kept close under 
 the white men's eyes when not under their very 
 hands. Turner had always trusted the Captain, 
 but there gradually arose in his mind the suspicion, 
 which is pretty general among the members of his 
 race, that in a case like this the best white man 
 cannot be expected to do justice to a black man. 
 Besides, Sims was growing sicker and weaker until 
 by night he was quite helpless. Turner made him 
 a "pallet" by spreading a blanket in the rear of the 
 boat and folding the sick man's coat for a pillow. 
 
 Now for the night Turner and the Professor, 
 whom he thoroly distrusted by this time, must 
 take turns in the watching. What should he do 
 when his turn came to sleep? He decided upon a 
 simple ruse : to feign sleep in his turn and watch 
 the Professor's movements. So, taking the first 
 watch and keeping it till nearly midnight he noticed 
 that the Professor did not sleep or slept very light 
 ly, for he stired whenever Turner made any un 
 usual movement. As is the rule, this suspicion by 
 the white man made the Negro more suspicious of 
 the white man. 
 
 In these two human bosoms a desperation was 
 growing. .Tho their tongues were silent as the 
 tomb, their spirits communed together in bitter- 
 
100 The Superior Race 
 
 ness. Each suspected that the other understood 
 him : and tho no threatening word had been ut 
 tered nor hostile hand raised they were already 
 engaged in a spiritual death-struggle. 
 
 At last Turner said unconcernedly : "I'll rest now. 
 if you'll watch." 
 
 "All right," said the anthropologist, with a sigh, 
 as if he had been holding his breath. 
 
 Turner sat leaning back against the front of the 
 boat and became quiet; his heart beat jerkily and 
 his muscles tightened as he observed the other man 
 move stealthily toward the rear where lay two 
 dangerous incentives, food and weapons. But 
 feigning sleep brought no decisive result. Finally 
 he became half unconscious with weariness and 
 watching, when a slight tremor of the boat waked 
 him. He threw up his hands and thrust some 
 thing hard from before his face just as there was 
 the "crack" of a 38-calibre rifle. He uttered an 
 involuntary shriek of surprise, but only his left 
 thumb which had caught the gun on the end, had 
 been grazed and burnt by the discharge. 
 
 The sick man, startled into sudden strength by 
 the report of the gun, shouted : "You damned fool ! 
 I told you not to kill him. The water would have 
 lasted a day or two longer and he might have saved 
 our lives." 
 
 But just then the sick man's eyes fell upon the 
 most savage crisis in the animal world, a hand-to- 
 hand, man-to-man struggle. The two figures in 
 
The Superior Race 101 
 
 the front of the boat with the weapon lifted high 
 between them were writhing and twisting like sil 
 houettes in a cinematograph. Foiled in his at 
 tempt, the Professor was now engaged in what he 
 thought to be a death-struggle. No anthropological 
 idea, if indeed one could have found lodgment in his 
 tumultuous mind, could now bow his antagonist. 
 Kipling has suggested that there is neither kith 
 nor kin nor race nor breed nor birth, when two 
 strong men stand face to face, "the they come 
 from the ends of the earth." Finally one of the 
 strugglers gave way with a despairing groan and 
 the other tumbled forward upon him. The sick 
 man was so exhausted with excitement that he 
 could not even speak. "You sly coward!" shouted 
 the voice of Nathan Turner. "If I were low-down 
 like you now I'd throw you into the Gulf." 
 
 By right of conquest the Negro was now the 
 master. "Don't be worried, Cap'n Sims," said he 
 coldly. "I'll look after the Pr'fess'r." He then 
 ordered the Professor to remain where he was, 
 while he proceeded to throw overboard all the 
 weapons except a sheathed hunting knife which he 
 put on his own person. Then saying, "I'm sorry, 
 Mister, but I want to keep you out of trouble and 
 I want to stay out of trouble myself," he securely 
 tied the Professor's hands behind his back and left 
 him on watch while he himself went to rest. 
 
 The Negro secretly admired what he called in 
 his mind the "gameness" of the white man in that 
 
102 The Superior Race 
 
 he did not waste words in protest or make futile 
 resistance after he found himself completely 
 worsted. 
 
 As day broke the Captain said that he was feel 
 ing better and asked for a little water. Turner 
 gave him a drink and then asked the silent Pro 
 fessor in a searching, conciliatory voice if he did 
 not want a drink also. He replied coldly that he 
 would like to have a drink, "if you are willing to 
 give me any." Paying no attention to the con 
 ditional clause, Turner poured out some water, and 
 as he was about to raise the cup to the other man's 
 mouth, he stopped and said: "Now, there ain't a 
 bit of use in this sort of foolishness. We are ali 
 in the same boat. We may go to the bottom and 
 we may be saved, but we can all be fair to one 
 another. I can forget all about our little difference 
 last night if you can." 
 
 The white man hesitated for a minute as if 
 searching 1 for an expedient in an embarrassing 
 situation, and then said : "I will be willing to do 
 whatever you and Captain Sims think best." 
 
 "All right," said Turner, ignoring the irrelevant 
 part of the reply, and untying the prisoner, "I 
 think it best for us all to go along together, and 
 I think we are going to be picked up before to 
 morrow night," 
 
 Captain Sims, who had tactfully taken no notice 
 of these proceedings, remarked that he believed he 
 discerned smoke to the southward. The others 
 
The Superior Race 103 
 
 strained their eyes but were not certain of any 
 smoke. But an hour later they saw a small steam 
 er to the southwest of them, evidently headed 
 northwest. Immediately Turner sprang on the 
 bow of the launch and waved his hat and shouted 
 with all his might. They all shouted and waved 
 frantically, but seemingly in vain, for no heed was 
 taken of them. Finally Turner literally tore off his 
 shirt which he tied to a fishing rod ; this he handed 
 to the Professor, and lifting him into the air told 
 him to wave it. A few minutes of this strenuous 
 exercise caused a puff of steam to fly up from 
 the ship, and a moment later the hoarse whistling 
 reached them. She changed her course, a boat 
 and crew were lowered and the rescued men were 
 taken aboard with their launch. It was a Cuban 
 crew, and Captain Sims knew enough Spanish to 
 learn that they were going from Havana to New 
 Orleans, 
 
 Four days later there appeared in the Mobile 
 Evening News an account of the harrowing experi 
 ence of two prominent white citizens and a Negro 
 wharf employee named Nathan Turner. The Ne 
 gro was the only one mentioned by name, and great 
 stress was laid on his "exceptional" courage and his 
 commendable "faithfulness" to the two white men. 
 
 Captain Sims chuckled as he showed this "peace 
 offering" to Nathan Turner, who laughed and 
 opened his white eyes, making his inky-black face 
 look even blacker, when he saw himself described 
 
104 The Superior Race 
 
 as a "dark mulatto," for they both knew that the 
 contributing editor of the News was Professor 
 Jefferson Davis Jones. 
 
"PASSING THE BUCK" 
 
 The North and the South met together at the 
 great Methodist Centenary Exposition in Columbus 
 Ohio. An unusual practice of democracy was pre 
 valent there, when we consider that fact. All the 
 races of mankind mingled freely in the various pri 
 vileges of the exposition. The reactionaries were 
 there, however, and they only tolerated this de 
 mocracy; they did not indorse it. 
 
 Among these was a group of four persons from 
 a moderate-sized North Carolina town, who had 
 been "suckled on a 'creed outworn," 'the creed of 
 inherent racial superiority. One was the mother, 
 proud in her graying light hair, consistent daugh 
 ter of a former slave-holding aristocracy. There 
 was the daughter of this matron, a real Southern 
 belle, with light hair slightly fluffy rather than 
 curly, twenty years old, aquiline, lithe, well-shaped, 
 -with small feet 'and lean ankles. There was 
 the son and brother, twenty-six years old, smell 
 ing- of cigarettes, brusque in manner, drawling in 
 speech, and swearing easily. The fourth was a 
 nephew and cousin, who was jborn and re-ared 
 in Ohio, from Abolitionist stock on his father's 
 side, but who had now been living in the South 
 
106 Passing The Buck 
 
 with his cousins just long enough to become "con 
 verted" and subverted on the race question. He 
 had learned to "hate niggers" as only a Southern- 
 ized Northerner can. It had taken him just thir 
 teen months to learn that the North was "all 
 wrong" on the Negro and the South. Thirteen 
 months of contact in the South had undone thirty- 
 odd years of training in Christian democracy in his 
 father's house and at Oberlin College. 
 
 This "converted" Northerner was becoming^ 
 very popular in that North Carolina community. 
 His street-corner confessions of a change of 
 heart, and his ready ridicule of the sentimentality 
 of his Northern home folk had advertised him as 
 a "sensible Yankee." If he would make his home 
 in North Carolina, local people told him, he could 
 get to Congress on the Democratic ticket and 
 "help to open the eyes of the North." 
 
 It was especially urged by the leaders of the 
 Southern church that this converted man should 
 go to the Centenary Celebration in Columbus, 
 where they would arrange for him to appear a- 
 mong the speakers and begin at once his mission, 
 of enlightening those benighted people still left 
 in isolated places of the North who believe that 
 "niggers" are human beings. 
 
 At the exposition grounds this party of four 
 had got acquainted with 'another man from Ohio, 
 who was much attracted by the physical beauty 
 and vivacity of the Southern belle. This Ohioan 
 
Passing The Buck 107 
 
 "was a faithful churchman, with his business in 
 Cincinnati and his home in one of the smaller 
 towns between that city and Columbus. He en 
 joyed the company of the Southern party, dined 
 with them, and together they visited the various 
 exhibits during the last two weeks of the exposi 
 tion. After they had passed through the exhibit 
 section called "THE AMERICAN NEGRO," he 
 was amused at their views concerning the colored 
 race, which they continued to force into the 
 conversations, in spite of his efforts to change 
 the subject. Many Southern white people 'feel 
 It like a patriotic duty to make converts on this 
 subject. 
 
 Finally one day as they sat by "the lake" un 
 der the trees at the exposition grounds the dis 
 cussion was waxing hot on the topic as to 
 whether any Negro, however intelligent and 
 seemingly refined, should ever be regarded and 
 treated as a gentleman |by (white people. The 
 simple-minded and unsophisticated Northerner 
 ventured to offer evidence of this kind: "Why, 
 I know one, have known him for ten years. He 
 is an assistant clerk in our Cincinnati office. He 
 was a southern boy, who graduated with hon 
 ors at Yale and has made good. He is a real 
 g-entleraan. I saw 'him today, I will introduce 
 him to you just to let you see for yourselves." 
 
 The way in which the quartet greeted this 
 last suggestion of his made this well-meaning 
 
108 Passing The Buck 
 
 man feel silly and sick. The belle laughed at 
 him openly as if he were a fool. Her brothef 
 swore mutteringly. The "converted" cousin 
 hissed and sneered. And the mother, with all 
 the conscious pride tof three hundred /years (of 
 active "race superiority," threw back her head 
 and said: " Why we have in our own state 
 hundreds of niggers who are just as intelligent 
 as the one you speak of, but they are niggers just 
 the same, and nobody ever presumed to 'intro 
 duce' them to us !" 
 
 The simple-hearted offender somewhat confused, 
 said hurriedly: "I do not mean to encroach upon 
 your private rights, but he is a friend of mine.** 
 At this the women smiled, the brother guffawed, 
 and the "converted" one remarked : "You need to 
 come South, that's what you need." 
 
 "One nigger had the nerve," said the brother, 
 "to sit right down at our table when we were eat 
 ing in the cafeteria." "And then," said the mother, 
 "'he also had the nerve to come over to the Colis 
 eum and take a seat right in front of me!" 
 
 "That's not all," remarked the "converted" 
 cousin, "but I remembered that darkey's face, 
 and he is the same fellow that heckled me when 
 I spoke at the Big Tent this afternoon." 
 
 What really happened in the Big Tent was this: 
 About three thousand Celebration visitors had gath 
 ered there to hear a speech announced as : "The 
 Confessions of an Ohioan from North Carolina/* 
 
Passing The Buck 109 
 
 Black and white, North and South, gathered to 
 hear these "confessions." In justice to the ma 
 jority of those in charge of the Celebration, it 
 should be said that this speech would never have 
 been allowed, had its real nature been anticipated. 
 The "converted" Northerner made the worst anti- 
 Negro speech that had been uttered since Wilson 
 muzzled Vardaman and the Lord muzzled Tillman. 
 He said that Negroes should not vote, that "blood 
 would run" (especially in North Carolina) before 
 they would submit to the official rule of any Negro, 
 that the Negro was only after '"social equality," 
 etc. To prove the last statement he instanced that 
 a few Negro babies had been left in France by 
 colored American soldiers ! At this point the col 
 ored man's voice called out from the rear of the 
 tent : "And how do you explain the millions of 
 mulattoes in the South?" The blow temporarily 
 stunned the speaker, and as he recovered he re 
 plied : "Er ah er I'm coming to that later." He 
 never came to it. 
 
 The speaker did not seem to realize that in 
 France there was no social barrier, and that there 
 is a barrier in the South, set by white men them 
 selves ; and that therefore the association of black 
 men with white women in France, where there is 
 no barrier, was virtue, as compared with the vici- 
 ousness of the American white man who breaks 
 through the very barrier which he has hypocritically 
 set up to preserve his own "racial integrity." There 
 
110 Passing The Buck 
 
 are many people who have not considered that dif 
 ference. 
 
 At the close of the Celebration this party of four 
 decided to visit Cincinnati on their way back to the 
 South. The Northern acquaintance had seen them 
 to the station and into the Cincinnati sleeper, and 
 as the train did not leave till after midnight, he 
 had promised, if possible, to get a ticket for that 
 same train, or else to come next day and show 
 them about Cincinnati. He had some business en 
 gagement in Columbus which he could not be sure 
 of getting rid of that evening. 
 
 As he was leaving the gate at the Union Sta 
 tion, he met his colored friend going in to take 
 the train for Cincinnati. "If you had got here a 
 little earlier I could have introduced you to those 
 Southern friends of mine, who, I told you, are so 
 anxious to meet you." Both laughed. 
 
 "Let me see your ticket," continued the white 
 friend. "By the way, you are in their car. Too 
 bad you have not had an introduction. I must 
 hurry now and try to take that car myself." 
 
 Meanwhile the Southern party had found its 
 berths. The mother had lower seven, the daughter 
 lower eight opposite, and the men had nine and 
 ten. When the colored man entered the car, the 
 daughter had put her coat and bag on the seat at 
 section eight, but was herself sitting in nine talk 
 ing to the two men. 
 
 There is humor in fate. This colored man walk- 
 
Passing The Buck 111 
 
 ed straight to number eight and deposited his be 
 longings and took his seat. He had the upper. 
 When the two men saw him, they were like bulls 
 when they see a red rag. There was brief con 
 sternation and then some half audible "damns" 
 only indirectly aimed at the colored passenger, and 
 to which he paid no seeming attention whatever. 
 He continued to read a newspaper. He rather felt 
 than saw them as they ostentatiously came over and 
 removed the girl's belongings to one of the men's 
 berths and brought a man's coat and bag and flung 
 them defiantly into number eight. In order to 
 strengthen his wilful indifference by action, the 
 colored man got up and moved off unconcernedly 
 to^the smoking room. As he went he overheard 
 
 one say: "that same old nigger ." He began 
 
 to recollect, and the cafeteria and the Big Tent 
 came up in his mind. 
 
 When he returned from the smoking room later, 
 he found the girl's belongings back in number 
 eight, and she and the two men were chatting 
 merrily and normally in a nearby seat, as if 
 nothing had ever happened. This made him suspi 
 cious. It is strange that normal conduct, coming 
 as a quick successor to abnormal conduct, will in 
 variably make us suspect. He began to think, and 
 later he moved off again to the smoking room and 
 thought and thought some more. 
 
 After a while the porter came into the smoking 
 
112 Passing The Buck 
 
 room and said: "All berths have been made down, 
 sir, when you are ready to retire." 
 
 "Wait here a minute, porter," said the colored 
 man, "I have something to say to you." He first 
 stepped out and peeped in at the berths. What 
 he saw confirmed his suspicions. The cousin and 
 brother were in earnest conversation with the 
 Southern girl. She appeared to be objecting in 
 stinctively, but they seemed to be urging it, almost 
 compelling her. An agreement seemed to be reach 
 ed, the girl yielding very reluctantly, and each 
 turned to his own berth, she going to number eigfht. 
 
 The colored passenger went back to the smok 
 ing room : "Porter, here's a dollar. I want you to 
 do something for me, very little trouble to you. 
 And I will explain before we reach Cincinnati. 
 Tell the conductor that I am an old friend of yours ; 
 that I want to sit up here with you and talk over 
 old times ; and that he need not refund my money 
 for upper eight unless some other passenger takes 
 it. But listen, porter, don't you let any colored 
 person get into it. I'll claim it myself first. Put 
 some white man into it, especially if a tall young 
 fellow in a Palm Beach suit asks for accommoda 
 tions to Cincinnati." 
 
 The porter stared a bit, seemingly mystified, but 
 finally shrugged his shoulders and said: "I'll fix 
 that all right." 
 
 Later the porter was heard to say to some one 
 on the platform : "No, sir, all space is taken. You 
 
Passing The Buck 113 
 
 might try the St. Louis car." Later, still, to some 
 other applicant : "Yessir, yessirree, jes' one upper 
 left, sir. You goin' to Cincinnati?" The porter's 
 voice seemed to be intentionally loud. The col 
 ored passenger slipped into the toilet room. He 
 heard the new arrival come into the smoking room, 
 wash his hands and go off with the porter to climb 
 into his berth. The porter returned. 
 
 "Was it he, porter?" 
 
 u Yes, it's him. Gone to upper eight." 
 
 "Anybody see him?" 
 
 "No. The lights are out and all seem sleep." 
 
 Soon the Pullman conductor came in, looked at 
 his watch, yawned and remarked to the colored 
 passenger : "Porter seems glad to see one of his 
 old friends ; it's been a long dry spell in Ohio," 
 and then he chuckled at his own wit. 
 
 After he and the colored passenger and the por 
 ter had talked about a number of things and the 
 train was on its way, a slight commotion was 
 heard in the berth sections, with confused 
 voices. The colored passenger covertly touched 
 the porter's arm and kept him back while the Pull 
 man conductor went to investigate. When the 
 conductor went in, the excited voices became loud 
 er: "If you don't have him arrested, conductor, 
 and put off this train, we'll fix him. He ought to 
 be in North Carolina that's what I say about let- 
 tin' niggers into Pullman cars we know 'em in 
 
114 ' Passing The Buck 
 
 the south all right ," the two men seemed to 
 
 be awfully wrought up. 
 
 Meanwhile the colored passenger, in the smok 
 ing room, had given the porter some hurried ex 
 planations. The porter turned on the lights and 
 they two went and peeped in. Three persons were 
 in the aisle remonstrating with the conductor, two 
 men and a woman, they in their trousers, and she 
 in her kimono, looking really and truly excited. 
 
 "Come here, porter," shouted the conductor. 
 Then to the two men : "Well, we won't have any 
 personal violence done in this car. So you just 
 put up that gun and we'll get the train conductor 
 and investigate." 
 
 "Investigate hell! you'll put that nigger out o* 
 here or we will !" 
 
 Meanwhile the porter had gone for the train 
 conductor. The colored passenger was peeping in, 
 still unobserved. When the train conductor came, 
 the Pullman conductor hastily explained, conclud 
 ing: " and they charge that the passenger in 
 
 the upper annoyed her." 
 
 "He started into her berth," said the brother. 
 
 "Wait !" said the conductor, and he shook the 
 mattress of upper eight. 
 
 "He's not asleep," sneered one of the Southern 
 ers. 
 
 The conductor shook again, and a truly sleepy 
 voice said: "Is it time to get up?" 
 
 "The hell it is!" snarled the brother. 
 
Passing, The Buck 115 
 
 "Wake up," said the conductor, "you are charged 
 with trying to enter the berth of the lady in lower 
 eight" 
 
 "Well," said the voice now fully awake, "I'm a 
 church member, but whoever made that charge is 
 a damned liar!" And with that a tousled red 
 head shot out from between the green curtains. 
 
 The girl fainted. 
 
 The brother said: "There must be some mis 
 take." 
 
 The red head rubbed its eyes and said: "What 
 in God's name?" 
 
 "Where's the nigger?" asked the cousin. "It 
 was a nigger, she meant." 
 
 Heads were sticking out from several berths by 
 this time and at this juncture our colored passen 
 ger walked in from the smoking room. 
 
 "There he is," said the brother. 
 
 "He?" said the Pullman conductor, "I left him 
 in the smoking room with the porter when I heard 
 the racket and came in here, and he had been there 
 talking to me and the porter ever since the train 
 started." 
 
 The colored passenger looked on scornfully,. with 
 his lips tight. 
 
 "Well!" shouted the disgusted train conductor, 
 "this passenger in upper eight has he done any 
 thing?" 
 
 "No !" yelled the "converted" one, in great humil 
 iation and anger. 
 
116 Passing The Buck 
 
 The conductor wheeled and left. The mother 
 accompanied her reviving daughter to the wom 
 en's room. 
 
 "She'll explain," said the profane brother in an 
 embarrassed voice to the head in upper eight. 
 
 By this time, however, the man in the upper 
 and the colored passenger had caught each other's 
 eye, and the latter was remarking : "/ will explain 
 to you tomorrow at the office." 
 
 The next afternoon at the office in Cincinnati, 
 after they had expressed their mutual disgust at 
 the experiences of the night before, the colored 
 assistant clerk remarked to his friend : "I saw that 
 a rather intimate relationship was going to de 
 velop, and knowing that you were an acquaintance 
 of theirs, and not having yet had the honor of an 
 introduction myself, I decided to pass the buck to 
 you!" 
 
TIT FOR TAT 
 
 How Colored Soldiers Defeated the Real Enemy 
 at Grand Villars 
 
 This is one of the true stories of the war. And 
 true stories are really the more fascinating. 
 
 The colored soldiers in this case were the 370th 
 regiment, largely from Chicago and the South, and 
 the "real enemy" was a white American regiment 
 that was full of Negro-haters. 
 
 The people of the little French town of Grand 
 Villars are of the simple-living, noble-minded peas 
 ant class, with high ideals of human life and free 
 from many of the petty motives that spoil much 
 of the rest of the world. They had never seen 
 Americans, and it happened that the first Ameri 
 can soldiers stationed among them were colored, 
 the 370th. This regiment was such a good sample 
 of its own colored people in America, running thru 
 all the possible colors from white Negroes to black. 
 And yet they were of one heart and soul and mind, 
 and when they marched down the streets of Grand 
 Villars, clothed in khaki, they looked like one solid 
 block of animated invincible bronze. 
 
118 Tit For Tat 
 
 It was perfectly natural that these French peo 
 ple should take this first sample as a type of all 
 Americans. That first impression of the "Arneri- 
 cain" became fixed. They thought, and not alto 
 gether incorrectly, that the American people were 
 of many varying human hues, and they thought 
 that COLOR predominated. 
 
 They also thought, perhaps less correctly, that all 
 Americans had the spirit of these boys : polite, 
 gentle to women, and hearty to all men. The most 
 ordinary peasant woman was treated by these col 
 ored soldiers with the same civility which they 
 accorded to the fashionable French women of the 
 town. A colored captain says that he would see 
 several French girls with water buckets on their 
 arms and pushing baby carriages as they descend 
 ed the hill to the spring; but that when these girls 
 returned from the spring, each bucket would be 
 carried and each baby carriage pushed by some big 
 stalwart soldier of the 370th. 
 
 The people of Grand Villars thought that Amer 
 ica must be a place of wonderful democracy ! Curi 
 ously enough the colored soldier was the best ally 
 of Woodrow Wilson, and caused the French people 
 to believe the words that emanated from the White 
 House. 
 
 Naturally the whole town, men, women and chil 
 dren, took this regiment right into its heart ; no 
 door was closed to them; nothing was for them 
 too good or quite good enough. As they anchored 
 
Tit For Tat 119 
 
 the hopes of the French by their soldierly bearing, 
 so also did they gladden the hearthsides with their 
 tales and songs. The girls were charmed when 
 the colored boys exhibited the photographs and ex 
 tolled the fine points of "the browns" they had left 
 behind. Well, as long as man is man, there will 
 always arise out of such agreeable society what 
 arose here genuine love. The people loved these 
 boys, and these boys loved the people. 
 
 And then it happened. A white American regi 
 ment came and encamped five miles from Grand 
 Villars. These soldiers of one monotonous hue, 
 were less attractive to strangers than the vari 
 colored men of the 370th. Then, too, they were 
 not so polite ; they were colder to the men, and 
 more assuming and direct among the women and 
 girls. They did not say so evenly to rich and 
 poor alike the euphonious French "good morning" 
 and "good evening," bonjour and bonsoir! And 
 when these white Americans went into the homes 
 of the people, after chatting awhile with the young 
 ladies, they might notice on the table the photo 
 graph of a brown or black soldier : "What is this ?" 
 
 A girl would reply: "O, Monsieur, that is my 
 John or (Sam, or Jake, or whatever happened 
 to be the name of that particular member of the 
 370th), mon bon ami!" (my beau). 
 
 Then hostilities began. 
 
 "Your zvhat? Why, don't you know that no white 
 person ever associates with them in America? They 
 
120 Tit For Tat 
 
 are not allowed to enter our homes or to speak to 
 any white woman. When a white woman in the 
 United States just speaks to one of those fellows, 
 all other white people shut her out of their homes 
 and never speak to her again !" 
 
 The white fellows very naturally kid it on a 
 little thick, in their efforts to cause the puzzled 
 French listeners to grasp the significance of this 
 peculiar thing. 
 
 "They are not Americans ; they are just niggers. 
 We only allow them to live in our country because 
 their people were once slaves there. But they are 
 not American citizens and are not even allowed 
 to talk back to white people. And they are very 
 criminal and dishonest; they will steal. They are 
 especially dangerous to women : in our country no 
 white woman dares to go near them unless a white 
 man is with her." 
 
 And just like most falsehoods, right there is 
 where it over-shot the mark and laid the foundation 
 for its own undoing ; for the girls of the house might 
 be seen to look at each other, indicating that they 
 themselves knew this last to be false. But in spite 
 of their own experiences with these brown boys, 
 they were somewhat disturbed by this brazen at 
 tack. Human nature can hardly trust itself. We 
 are all more or less at the mercy of what we hear, 
 until we begin to confer. So, when the girls of 
 the town would gather in little groups, one would 
 break the ice with a whisper : "Those new Ameri- 
 
Tit For Tat 121 
 
 cans tell me that my John is bad." Then other 
 girls would pipe in : 
 
 "And they told mama that my Sam is bad." 
 "And they tell father that my Bill is bad." "And 
 they say that mine is bad." "And mine." 
 
 And strange to say, the very unanimity of the 
 report raised the first confident doubt of it; and 
 more than one Avould remark: "Well, it must be a 
 falsehood, for it is impossible that they alt should be 
 bad!" Such is the training of the French mind that 
 it could only think of goodness or badness as be 
 longing to individuals, and could not attach a moral 
 idea to race or color. They could not grasp the 
 idea of a bad race, and they thought of worth or 
 unworth as an individual characteristic. 
 
 After getting this encourgement from each other, 
 the girls began to confide the matter to their col 
 ored friends. 
 
 The colored boys then got their heads together, 
 and in strict compliance with the laws of human 
 nature, they began to plan for defense and counter 
 attack. A strategem was conceived by one of their 
 lieutenants and he proposed to call all the girls and 
 women of Grand Villars to assemble in convention 
 and hear a speech from him. When the summons 
 went forth, the whole town came out. For be 
 cause of the good behavior of their men, the of 
 ficers of the 370th regiment literally "owned the 
 town." 
 
 The lieutenant took the platform. He had grown 
 
122 Tit For Tat 
 
 up in New Orleans and could speak excellent 
 French. And this is the barage which he laid down 
 against the attacking enemy : 
 
 "Women and girls of Grand Villars : We regret 
 to find it necessary to give you fair warning. You 
 have seen for yourselves that the soldiers who are 
 encamped near this village are not real Americans, 
 altho they are enlisted in the American Army. 
 Americans are polite: they are not. Americans are 
 cordial: they are cold. Americans are gentle: they 
 are rough. Americans are democratic : these men 
 are snobbish. Americans respect alike the hon 
 orable rich and the honest poor : these men wor 
 ship money but respect nobody. Americans do not 
 like to disparage their fellow countrymen or their 
 comrades-in-arms : these men have tried without 
 cause to slander us. Americans are brave : these 
 men are not brave, for they do not face us, but 
 they attack us in secret to you. 
 
 "Now it is my painful duty to tell you who these 
 men are. Without protest we allow them to live 
 in our country, but they hate us. We are just to 
 them and treat them as men, as equals before the 
 law; but they are unjust to us and assume an at 
 titude of natural superiority. Many of them are 
 descendants of the German and the Austrian, and 
 have much of the old arrogance of their fore 
 fathers. Because of their conduct we do not as 
 sociate with them in our country, and we do not 
 
Tit For Tat 123 
 
 call them Americans : we call them er 'crackers' 
 and 'pecks' !" 
 
 That was a finisher. The soldiers of the five- 
 mile camp were chagrined and "stung" to find the 
 private doors of Grand Villars tightly closed to 
 them, while the 370th enjoyed greater hospitality 
 than ever before. It was a pitiable sight, this 
 complete and sincere ostricism of the haughty and 
 the proud. It was a heavy dose of their own medi 
 cine, the most terrible thing that could be offered 
 them. If any treatment could cure a man. it 
 should be that. True to their sympathetic nature, 
 the colored boys became really sorry for the white 
 boys, when they saw them in groups on the street 
 corners, looking in vain for society and sympathy, 
 and sometimes tarrying so late that the military 
 guard would have to order them out at the g 1 ate. 
 To be sure they could visit the public restaurants 
 and hotels ; and the French waitress, when she 
 would pass a table where a colored soldier was 
 seated, would stoop low and whisper (not being 
 able to remember the longer epithet) : "There are 
 
 a lot of those Pecks here tonight." 
 ***** * 
 
 The proof that our race prejudice is artificial, 
 abnormal and rather contrary to nature, is the fact 
 that an uninitiated mind like that of the French 
 simply cannot "understand" it. It was comical to 
 see them trying to "get it," when the white Ameri 
 can was. trying to explain. Some colored soldiers 
 
124 Tit For Tat 
 
 were eating" in the main dining room of an hotel 
 White American officers entered, and seeing a 
 smaller, less elegant dining room adjoining, they 
 called the proprietor and asked him to put the 
 colored soldiers in the smaller room, explaining 
 that they were "not fit" to eat with white men, 
 etc. You should have seen the face of this be 
 wildered Frenchman, as he endeavored to be polite 
 and tried at the same time to square his common- 
 sense with this American puzzle : "Zhentlemen. I 
 do not understand. These other zhentlemen have 
 paid their bills and they are polite, and you say 
 they are not good enough to eat where you eat, 
 I do not understand. These men are American 
 soldiers like you and have uniforms like you, 
 I do not understand, how can they be good enough 
 to be in the same uniform and not good enough to 
 eat in the same room ? I do not understand. And, 
 my good zhentlemen, I will not compel you to eat 
 with the other zhentlemen, the little dining room 
 is open, there is no one in it. why don't you go 
 into it? I cannot ask the others to move, for they 
 are satisfied. You are dissatisfied, why should I 
 disturb the satisfied one? I do not understand !" 
 
 And on and on the bewildered Frenchman plead 
 before this inexorable American god. Small won 
 der it is that the average white American soldier 
 should lose some of his ardor for France after such 
 experiences. He was a puzzle to France, and 
 France must have been an enigma to him. Per- 
 
Tit For Tat 125 
 
 haps the only way in the world for the white 
 American ever to appreciate this demon which he 
 worships, is to have a chance to feel the full weight 
 of his rod, as did the white soldiers at Grand Villars. 
 FINIS.