TTOWARD spring the snow melted and with gum boots I plunged into the cold, wet corn field and began gathering the corn. It was nasty, cold work. The damp earth sent cold chills up through my limbs and as a result I was ill, and could do nothing for a week or more. In desperation I wrote the Reverend and being a man, I hoped he'd understand. I told him of my sickness and the circumstances, of Orlean's claim and of my crops to be put in. It was then April and soon the oats, wheat and barley should be seeded. It was a business letter altogether, but I never heard from him, and later learned that he had read only a part of the letter.
TOWARD spring the snow melted and with gum boots I plunged into the cold, wet corn field and began gathering the corn. It was nasty, cold work. The damp earth sent cold chills up through my limbs and as a result I was ill, and could do nothing for a week or more. In desperation I wrote the Reverend and being a man, I hoped he'd understand. I told him of my sickness and the circumstances, of Orlean's claim and of my crops to be put in. It was then April and soon the oats, wheat and barley should be seeded. It was a business letter altogether, but I never heard from him, and later learned that he had read only a part of the letter.
While in Chicago, one evening I had called at the house and found the household in a ferment of excitement, with everyone saying nothing and apparently trying to look as small and scarced as possible, while in their midst, standing like a jungle king and in a plaided bathrobe, the Reverend was pouring a storm of abuse upon his wife and shouting orders while the wife was trotting to and fro like a frightened lamb, protesting weakly. The way he was storming at her made me feel ashamed but after listening to his tirade for some fifteen minutes I was angry enough to knock him down then and there. He reminded me more of a brute than a pious minister. When he had finally exhausted himself he turned without speaking to me and strode up the stairs,head reared back and carrying himself like a brave soldier returning from war. I wondered then how long it would be before I would be commanded as she had been. Shortly afterward I could hardly control the impulse to take her in my arms and comfort her. She was crying quietly and looked so pitiful. I was told she had been treated in a like manner off and on for thirty years.
As stated, I did not hear from the Reverend and when I wrote to Orlean I implied that I did not think her father much of a business man. Perhaps this was wrong, at least when I received another letter from her it contained the receipt for the payment on the claim, and the single sheet of paper comprising the letter conveyed the intelligence that since she thought it best not to marry me she was forwarding the receipt with thanks for my kindness and hopes for future success. I received the letter on Friday. Saturday night I went into Megory and took the early Sunday morning train bound for Chicago and to marry her, and while I did not think she had treated me just right I would not allow a matter of a trip to Chicago to stand in the way of our marriage. I had an idea her father was indirectly responsible. He and I were much unlike and disagreed in our discussions concerning the so-called negro problem, and in almost every other discussion in which we had engaged.
Arriving in Omaha I sent a telegram to Orlean asking her not to go to work that day, as I would be in Chicago in the morning. At the depot I called up the house and Claves answered the phone and was very impertinent, but before he said much Orleantook the receiver and without much welcome started to tell me about the criticisms of her father in my letters.
"You are not taking it in the right way," I hurriedly told her. "I'll come to the house and we'll talk it over. You will see me, won't you?"
"Yes," she answered hesitatingly, appearing to be a little frightened. Then added, "I'll do you that honor."
The Reverend had returned to Southern Illinois, and when I entered the house the rest of the family appeared to have been holding a consultation in the kitchen, which they had, as Orlean informed me later, with Orlean standing poutingly to one side. She commenced telling me what she was not going to do, but I went directly to her, and gathered her in my arms, with her making a slight resistance but soon succumbing. I looked down at her still pouting face and remonstrated teasingly.
Ethel broke in, her voice resembling a scream, protesting against such boldness on my part, saying: "Orlean doesn't want you and she isn't going to go onto your old farm". Here Orlean silenced her saying that she would attend to that herself, and took me to the front part of the house, with her mother tagging after us in a sort of half-stupor and apparently not knowing what to do. We sat down on the davenport where she began giving me a lecture and declaring what she was not going to do. Her mother interposed something that angered me, though I do not now recall what it was, and a look of dissatisfaction came into my face which Orlean observed.
"Don'tyou scold mama," she finished. "Now, do you hear?"
"Yes, dear," I answered, meekly, with my arm around her waist and my face hidden behind her shoulder. "Anything more?"
"Well, well." She appeared at a loss to know what further to say or how to proceed.
Ethel remarked afterward to her mother that Orlean had not been near me a half hour until she was listening to everything I said.
She finally succeeded in getting off to work after commanding me to free her as she wanted to get away to think. Her mother bristled up with an, "I'll talk to you." This was entirely to my liking. I loved her mother as well as my own and had no fear that we would not soon agree, and we did. She couldn't be serious with me very long. She persisted in saying, however:
"I want my husband to know you are here and to know all about this. You must not expect to run in and get his daughter just like something wild, nor you just must not!"
"All right, mother," I assented. "But I must hurry back to Dakota, you know, for I can't lose so much time this time of year."
"You're the worst man I ever saw for always being in a hurry. I—I'll—well, I do declare!" And she bustled off to the kitchen with me following and talking.
"Oh, can't I get away from you? This is just awful, Mr. Devereaux."
"Don't you like the name?" I put in winningly and cutting off her discourse, and in spite of her attempt at seriousness she smiled.
"Itis a beautiful name," she admitted, looking at me slyly out of her small black eyes. She was part Indian, just a trifle, but sufficient to give her black eyes instead of brown, as most colored people have, and she had long black hair.
Before Orlean returned from the store her mother and I were like mother and son and Orlean seemed pleased, while Ethel looked at Claves and admitted that I would get Orlean, anyhow. The only thing necessary now was to reach the elder, and the next morning we spent a couple of hours trying to locate him by telephone. We finally succeeded, as I thought, but he denied later he was the party, though I would have sworn to the voice being his as I could hear him distinctly. In answer to my statement that we were ready to marry he shouted in a frantic voice:
"I don't approve of it! I don't approve of it! I don't approve of it!" and kept shouting it over and over until the operator called the time was up.
A letter had been sent him by special delivery the day I arrived and the following morning a reply was received stating that if Orlean married me, without my convincing him that I was marrying her for love, and not to hold down a Dakota claim, she would be doing so without his consent. In discussing the matter later Ethel, who had become resigned to the inevitable, said:
"If you want to get along with papa you must flatter him. Just make him think he is a king."
"Ah," I thought. "Here is where I made my mistake."
I had started wrong. "Just make him think he isa king, His Majesty Newton Jasper." The idea kept revolving in my mind as I realized the reason I had not made good with him. I was too plain and sincere. I must flatter him, make him think he was what he was not, and my failure to do that was the reason for his listening to me in such an expressionless manner.
Somewhere I had read that to be a king was to look wise and say nothing. This is what he had done. Evidently he liked to feel great. I recalled the name he was known by, "the Reverend N.J.," and I had heard him spoken of jokingly as the "Great N.J." The N.J. was for Newton Jasper. Ha! Ha! The more I thought of his greatness the more amused I became. I might have settled the matter easily if I had no objection to flattering him. He arrived home the next morning and was sitting in the parlor when I called, trying to look serious, and surveying me as I entered, just as a king might have done a disobedient subject. I had been so free and without fear for so long that it was beyond my ability to shrivel up and drop as he continued to look me over. I proceeded to tell him all that I had written in my letter to him, the one he had not read, but did not intimate that I knew he had not read it.
In the dining room where we gathered a few minutes later, with the family assembled in mute attention, he asked Orlean whether she wanted to marry me and live in Dakota and she admitted that she did. Then turning to me he began a lengthy discourse with many ifs and if nots and kept it up until I cut in with:
"Mydear people, when I first came to see Orlean I didn't profess love. Circumstances had not granted us the opportunity, but we entered a mutual agreement that we would wait and see whether we could learn to love each other or not." Hesitating a moment, I looked at Orlean and gaining confidence as I met her soft glance, I went on: "I cannot guarantee anything as to the future. We may be happy, and we may not, but I hope for the best."
That seemed to satisfy him and he was very nice about it afterward. Orlean and I had been to the court house the day previous and got the license, and when her father told us we should go and get the license we looked at each other rather sheepishly, and stammered out something, but went down town and bought a pair of shoes instead. When we arrived home preparations were being made for the wedding. The elder called up the homes of two bishops who lived in the city, and when he found one sick and the other out of town he was somewhat disappointed, as it had always been his desire to have his daughters married by a bishop. He had failed in the first instance and was compelled to accept the services of the pastor of one of the three large African M.E. Churches of the city at the wedding of Ethel, and had to call upon this pastor again but found he also was out of the city. He finally secured the services of another pastor, by whom we were married in the presence of some twenty or more near friends of the family, Orlean wearing her sister's wedding dress and veil. The dress was becoming and I thought her very beautiful. I wore a Prince Albert coat and trousers to match whichbelonged to Claves and were too small and tight, making me uncomfortable. I was not long in getting out of them after undergoing the ordeal of being kissed by all the ladies present. Mrs. Ewis invited us to spend the evening at her home and the next day we left for South Dakota.
A beautiful townsite where trees stood.(page 182.)
A beautiful townsite where trees stood.(page 182.)
A SNAKE IN THE GRASS
UUSUALLY in the story of a man's life, or in fiction, when he gets the girl's consent to marry, first admitting the love, the story ends; but with mine it was much to the contrary. The story did not end there, nor when we had married that afternoon at two o'clock. Instead, my marriage brought the change in my life which was the indirect cause of my writing this story. From that time adventures were numerous. We arrived in Megory several hours late and remained over night at a hotel, going to the farm the next morning and then to the house I had rented temporarily.
USUALLY in the story of a man's life, or in fiction, when he gets the girl's consent to marry, first admitting the love, the story ends; but with mine it was much to the contrary. The story did not end there, nor when we had married that afternoon at two o'clock. Instead, my marriage brought the change in my life which was the indirect cause of my writing this story. From that time adventures were numerous. We arrived in Megory several hours late and remained over night at a hotel, going to the farm the next morning and then to the house I had rented temporarily.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I looked over the fields, and saw that the boy I hired had done nicely with the work during my absence. The next night about sixty of the white neighbors gave us a charivari and my wife was much pleased to know there was no color prejudice among them. We purchased about a hundred dollars worth of furniture in the town and at once began housekeeping. My bride didn't know much about cooking, but otherwise was a good housekeeper, and willing to learn all she could. She was not a forceful person and could not be hurried, but was kind and good as could be, and I soon became very fond of her and found marriage much of an improvement over living alone.
In May we went up to her claim and put up a sod house and stayed there awhile, later returning to Megorycounty to look after the crops. Our first trouble occurred in about a month. I was still rather angry over the Reverend's obliging me to spend the money to go to Chicago. This had cost me a hundred dollars which I needed badly to pay the interest on my loan. Letters began coming from the company holding the mortgages, besides I had other obligations pending. I had only fifty dollars in the bank when I started to Chicago and while there drew checks on it for fifty more, making an overdraft of fifty dollars which it took me a month to get paid after returning home. The furniture required for housekeeping and improvements in connection with the homesteads took more money, and my sister went home to attend the graduation of another sister and I was required to pay the bills. My corn was gathered and I now shelled it. As the price in Megory was only forty cents at the elevators I hauled it to Victor, where I received seventy and sometimes seventy-five cents for it, but as it was thirty-five miles, that took time and the long drive was hard on the horses. Orlean's folks kept writing letters telling her she must send money to buy something they thought nice for her to have, and while no doubt not intending to cause any trouble, they made it very hard for me. Money matters are usually a source of trouble to the lives of newly-weds and business is so cold-blooded that it contrasts severely with love's young dream.
My position was a trying one for the reason that all the relatives on both sides seemed to take it for granted that I should have plenty of money, and nothing I could say or do seemed to change matters. Fromhis circuit the Reverend wrote glowing letters to his "daughter and son," of what all the people were saying. Everybody thought she had married so well; Mr. Devereaux, or Oscar, as they put it, was of good family, a successful young man, and was rich. I hadn't written to him and called him "dear father." Perhaps this is what I should have done. In a way it would have been easy enough to write, and since my marriage I had no letters to spend hours in writing. Perhaps I should have written to him, but when a man is in the position I faced, debts on one side and relatives on the other, I thought it would not do to write as I felt, and I could not write otherwise and play the hypocrite, as I had not liked him from the beginning, and now disliked him still more because I could find no way of letting him know how I felt. This was no doubt foolish, but it was the way I felt about it at the time. My father-in-law evidently thought me ungrateful, and wrote Orlean that I should write him or the folks at home occasionally, but I remained obdurate. I felt sure he expected me to feel flattered over the opinions of which he had written in regard to my being considered rich, but I did not want to be considered rich, for I was not. I had never been vain, and hating flattery, I wanted to tell her people the truth. I wanted them to understand, if they did not, what it took to make good in this western country, and that I had a load and wanted their encouragement and invited criticism, not empty praise and flattery.
Before I had any colored people to discourage me with their ignorance of business or what is required forsuccess, I was stimulated to effort by the example of my white neighbors and friends who were doing what I admired, building an empire; and to me that was the big idea. Their parents before them knew something of business and this knowledge was a goodly heritage. If they could not help their children with money they at least gave their moral support and visited them and encouraged them with kind words of hope and cheer. The people in a new country live mostly on hopes for the first five or ten years. My parents and grandparents had been slaves, honest, but ignorant. My father could neither read nor write, had not succeeded in a large way, and had nothing to give me as a start, not even practical knowledge. My wife's parents were a little different, but it would have been better for me had her father been other than "the big preacher" as he was referred to, who in order to be at peace with, it was necessary to praise.
What I wanted in the circumstances I now faced was to be allowed to mould my wife into a practical woman who would be a help in the work we had before us, and some day, I assured her, we would be well to do, and then we could have the better things of life.
"How long?" She would ask, weeping. She was always crying and so many tears got on my nerves, especially when my creditors were pestering me with duns, and it is Hades to be dunned, especially when you have not been used to it.
"Oh!" I'd say. "Five or ten years."
And then she'd have another cry, and I would have to do a lot of petting and persuading to keep herfrom telling her mother. This all had a tendency to make me cross and I began to neglect kissing her as much as I had been doing, but she was good and had been a nice girl when I married her. She could only be made to stop crying when I would spend an hour or two petting and assuring her I still loved her, and this when I should have been in the fields. She would ask me a dozen times a day whether I still loved her, or was I growing tired of her so soon. She was a veritable clinging vine. This continued until we were both decidedly unhappy and then began ugly little quarrels, but when she would be away with my sister to her claim in Tipp county I would be so lonesome without her, simple as I thought she was, and days seemed like weeks.
One day she was late in bringing my dinner to the field where I was plowing, and we had a quarrel which made us both so miserable and unhappy that we were ashamed of ourselves. By some power for which we were neither responsible, our disagreements came to an end and we never quarreled again.
The first two weeks in June were hot and dry, and considerable damage was done to the crops in Tipp county and in Megory county also. The winds blew from the south and became so hot the young green plants began to fire, but a big rain on the twenty-fourth saved the crops in Megory county. About that time the Reverend wrote that he would come to see us after conference, which was then three months away.
One day we were going to town after our little quarrels were over, and I talked kindly with Orlean abouther father and tried to overcome my dislike of him, for her sake. I had learned by that time just how she had been raised, and that was to to praise her father. She would say:
"You know, papa is such a big man," or "He is so great."
She had begun to call me her great and big husband, and I think that had been the cause of part of our quarrels for I had discouraged it. I had a horror of praise when I thought how silly her father was over it, and she had about ceased and now talked more sensibly, weighing matters and helping me a little mentally.
We talked of her father and his expected visit. She appeared so pleased over the prospect and said:
"Won't he make a hit up here? Won't these white people be foolish over his fine looks and that beautiful white hair?" And she raised her hands and drew them back as I had seen her do in stroking her father's hair.
I agreed with her that he would attract some attention and changed the subject. When we returned home she gave me the letter to read that she had written to him. She was obedient and did try so hard to please me, and when I read in the letter she had written that we had been to town and had talked about him all the way and were anxious for him to visit us; that we had agreed that he would make a great impression with the people out here, I wanted very much to tell her not to send that letter as it placed me in a false light, and would cause him to think the people were going to be crazy about him and his distinguished appearance; butshe was watching me so closely that I could not be mean enough to speak my mind and did not offer my usual criticism.
A short time before her father arrived, a contest was filed against Orlean's claim on the ground that she had never established a residence. We had established residence, but by staying much of the time in Megory county had laid the claim liable to contest. The man who filed the contest was a banker in Amro, this bank being one of the few buildings left there. I knew we were in for a big expense and lots of trouble, which I had feared, and had been working early and late to get through my work in Megory county and get onto her claim permanently.
We did not receive the Reverend's letter stating when he would arrive so I was not at the train to meet him, but happened to be in town on horse back. In answer to my inquiries, a man who had come in on the train gave me a description of a colored man who had arrived on the same train, and I knew that my father-in-law was in town. I went to the hotel and found he had left his baggage but had gone to the restaurant, where I found him. He seemed pleased to be in Megory and after I explained that I had not received his letter, I went to look up a German neighbor who was in town in a buggy, thinking I would have the Reverend ride out with him. When we got ready to go the German was so drunk and noisy that the Reverend was frightened and remarked cautiously that he did not know whether he wanted to ride out with a drunken man or not. The German heard him and roared in a still louder tone:
"Youdon't have to ride with me. Naw! Naw! Naw!"
The elder became more frightened at this and hurriedly ducked into the hotel, where he stayed. I hitched a team of young mules to the wagon the next morning and sent Orlean to town after him.
The Reverend seemed to be carried away with our lives on the Little Crow, and we got along fine until he and I got to arguing the race question, which brought about friction. It was as I had feared but it seemed impossible to avoid it. He had the most ancient and backward ideas concerning race advancement I had ever heard. He was filled to overflowing with condemnation of the white race and eulogy of the negro. In his idea the negro had no fault, nor could he do any wrong or make any mistake. Everything had been against him and according to the Reverend's idea, was still. This he would declare very loudly. From the race question we drifted to the discussion of mixed schools.
The Reverend had educated his girls with the intention of making teachers of them and would speak of this fact with much pride, speaking slowly and distinctly like one who has had years of oratory. He would insist that the public schools of Chicago have not given them a chance. "I am opposed to mixed schools," he would exclaim. "They are like everything else the white people control. They are managed in a way to keep the colored people down."
Here Orlean dissented, this being about the only time she did openly disagree with him. She was firmin declaring there was no law or management preventing the colored girls' teaching in Chicago if they were competent.
"In the first place," she carefully continued, "the school we attended in Ohio does not admit to teach in the city."
In order to teach in the city schools it is either necessary to be a graduate of the normal, or have had a certain number of years' experience elsewhere. I do not remember all the whys, but she was emphatic and continued to insist that it was to some extent the fault of the girls, who were not all as attentive to books as they should be; spending too much time in society or with something else that kept them from their studies, which impaired their chances when they attempted to enter the city schools.
She held up instances where colored girls were teaching in Chicago schools and had been for years, which knocked the foundation from his argument.
There are very few colored people in a city or state which has mixed schools, who desire to have them separated. The mixed schools give the colored children a more equal opportunity and all the advantage of efficient management. Separate schools lack this. Even in the large cities, where separate schools are in force, the advantage is invariably with the white schools.
Another advantage of mixed schools is, it helps to eliminate so much prejudice. Many ignorant colored people, as well as many ignorant white people, fill their children's minds with undue prejudice against each race. If they are kept in separate schoolsthis line becomes more distinct, with one colored child filling the mind of other colored children with bad ideas, and the white child doing likewise, which is never helpful to the community. By nature, in the past at least, the colored children were more ferocious and aggressive; too much so, which is because they have not been out of heathenism many years. The mixed school helps to eliminate this tendency.
With the Reverend it was a self-evident fact, that the only thing he cared about was that it would be easier for the colored girls to teach, if the schools were separate. I was becoming more and more convinced that he belonged to the class of the negro race that desires ease, privilege, freedom, position, and luxury without any great material effort on their part to acquire it, and still held to the time-worn cry of "no opportunity."
Following this disagreement came another. I had always approved of Booker T. Washington, his life and his work in the uplift of the negro. Before his name was mentioned I had decided just about how he would take it, and I was not mistaken. He was bitterly opposed to the educator.
THE PROGRESSIVES AND THE REACTIONARIES
IIT is not commonly known by the white people at large that a great number of colored people are against Mr. Washington. Being an educator and philanthropist, it is hard to conceive any reason why they should be opposed to him, but the fact remains that they are.
IT is not commonly known by the white people at large that a great number of colored people are against Mr. Washington. Being an educator and philanthropist, it is hard to conceive any reason why they should be opposed to him, but the fact remains that they are.
There are two distinct factions of the negro race, who might be classed as Progressives and Reactionaries, somewhat like the politicians. The Progressives, led by Booker T. Washington and with industrial education as the material idea, are good, active citizens; while the other class distinctly reactionary in every way, contend for more equal rights, privileges, and protection, which is all very logical, indeed, but they do not substantiate their demands with any concrete policies; depending largely on loud demands, and are too much given to the condemnation of the entire white race for the depredations of a few.
It is true, very true indeed, that the American negro does not receive all he is entitled to under the constitution. Volumes could be filled with the many injustices he has to suffer, and which are not right before God and man; yet, when it is considered that other races in other countries, are persecuted even more than the negro is in parts of the United States, there should be no reason why the American negro allow obvious prejudice to prevent his taking advantage of opportunities that surround him.
Ihave been called a "radical," perhaps I am, but for years I have felt constrained to deplore the negligence of the colored race in America, in not seizing the opportunity for monopolizing more of the many million acres of rich farm lands in the great northwest, where immigrants from the old world own many of acres of rich farm lands; while the millions of blacks, only a few hundred miles away, are as oblivious to it all as the heathen of Africa are to civilization.
In Iowa, for instance, where the number of farms total around two hundred and ten thousand, and include the richest land in the world, only thirty-seven are owned and operated by negroes, while South Dakota, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota have many less. I would quote these facts to my father-in-law until I was darker in the face than I naturally am. He could offer no counter argument to them, but continued to vituperate the sins of the white people. He was a member in good standing of the reactionary faction of the negro race, the larger part of which are African M.E. ministers.
Since Booker T. Washington came into prominence they have held back and done what they could to impede and criticize his work, and cast little stones in his path of progress, while most of the younger members of the ministry are heart and soul in accord with him and are helping all they can. The older members are almost to a unit, with some exceptions, of course, against him and his industrial educational ideas.
A few years ago a professor in a colored university inGeorgia wrote a book which had a tremendous sale. He claimed in his book that the public had become so over-enthused regarding Booker T. and industrial education, that the colored schools for literary training were almost forgotten, and, of course, were severely handicapped by a lack of funds. His was not criticism, but was intended to call attention of the public to the number of colored schools in dire need of funds, which on account of race prejudice in the south, must teach classics. This was true, although industrial education was the first means of lifting the ignorant masses into a state of good citizenship. Immediately following the publication of the volume referred to, thousands of anti-Booker T.'s proceeded to place the writer as representing their cause and formed all kinds of clubs in his honor, or gave their clubs his name. They pretended to feel and to have everyone else feel, that they had at last found a man who would lead them against Booker T. and industrial education.
They made a lot of noise for a while, which soon died out, however, as the author of the book was far too broad minded and intelligent in every way, to be a party to such a theory, much less, to lead a lot of reckless people, who never had and never would do anything for the uplifting of their race.
The Reverend and I could not in any way agree. He was so bitter against industrial education and the educator's name, that he lost all composure in trying to dodge the issue in our argument, and found himself up against a brick wall in attempting to belittle Mr. Washington's work. Most of the troublewith the elder was, that he was not an intelligent man, never read anything but negro papers, and was interested only in negro questions. He was born in Arkansas, but maintained false ideas about himself. He never admitted to having been born a slave, but he was nearly sixty years of age, and sixty years ago a negro born in Arkansas would have been born in slavery, unless his parents had purchased themselves. If this had been the case, as vain as he was, I felt sure he would have had much to say about it. He must have been born a slave, but of course had been young when freed. He had lived in Springfield, Missouri, after leaving Arkansas, and later moving to Iowa, where, at the age of twenty-seven years, he was ordained a minister and started to preach, which he had continued for thirty years or more. He never had any theological training. This was told me by my wife, and she added despairingly:
"Poor papa! He is just ignorant and hard-headed, and all his life has been associated with hard-headed negro preachers. He reads nothing but radical negro papers and wants everybody to regard him as being a brilliant man, and you might as well try to reason with two trees, or a brick wall, as to try to reason with him or Ethel. I'm so sorry papa is so ignorant. Mama has always tried to get him to study, but he would never do it. That's all."
We went up to the claims, taking the elder along. My sister had married and her husband was making hay on the claims.
I might have been more patient with the Reverend, ifhe had not been so full of pretense, when being plain and truthful would have been so much better and easier. I had quit talking to him about anything serious or anything that interested me, but would sit and listen to him talk of the big preachers, and the bishops, and the great negroes who had died years before. He seemed fond of talking of what they had done in the past and what more could be done in the future, if the white people were not so strongly banded against them. After this, his conversation would turn to pure gossip, such as women might indulge in. He talked about the women belonging to the churches of his district, whether they were living right or wrong, and could tell very funny stories about them.
In Dakota, like most parts of the west, people who have any money at all, carry no cash in the pocket, but bank their money and use checks. The people of the east and south, that is, the common people, seldom have a checking account, and, with the masses of the negroes, no account at all. During the summer Orlean had sent her father my checks with which to make purchases. The Reverend told me he checked altogether, but my wife had told me her father's ambition had always been to have a checking account, but had not been able to do so. I had to laugh over this, for it was no distinction whatever. We discussed the banking business and the elder tried to tell me that if a national bank went broke, the government paid all the depositors, while if it was a state bank, the depositors lost. As this was so far from correct, I explained the laws that governed national banks andstate banks alike, as regards the depositors, in the event of insolvency. I did not mean to bring out such a storm but he flew into an accusation, exclaiming excitedly:
"That's just the way you are! You must have everything your way! I never saw such a contrary man! You won't believe anything!"
"But, Reverend," I remonstrated. "I have no 'way' in this. What I have quoted you is simply the law, the law governing national and state bank deposits, that you can read up on yourself, just the same as I have done. If I am wrong, I very humbly beg your pardon."
The poor old man was so chagrined he seemed hardly to know what to do, though this was but one of many awkward situations due to his ignorance of the most simple business matters. Another time he was trying to listen intelligently to a conversation relating to the development of the northwest, when I had occasion to speak of Jim Hill. Seeing he did not look enlightened, I repeated, this time referring to him as James J. Hill, of the Great Northern, and inquired if he had not heard of the pioneer builder.
"No, I never heard of him," he answered.
"Never heard of James J. Hill?" I exclaimed, in surprise.
"Why should I have heard of him," he said, answering my exclamation calmly.
"O, no reason at all," I concluded, and remained silent, but my face must have expressed my disgust at his ignorance, and he a public man for thirty years.
Ernest Nicholson takes a hand.(Page 186.)
Ernest Nicholson takes a hand.(Page 186.)
Afterthis conversation I forced myself to remain quiet and listen to common gossip. Instead of being pleased to see us happy and Orlean contented, he would, whenever alone with her, discourage her in every way he could, sighing for sympathy, praising Claves and telling her how much he was doing for Ethel, and how much she, Orlean, was sacrificing for me.
The contest trial occurred while he was with us, and cost, to start with, an attorney's fee of fifty dollars, in addition to witnesses' expenses. I had bought a house in Megory and we moved it onto Orlean's claim. The Reverend helped with the moving, but he was so discouraging to have around. He dug up all the skeletons I left buried in M—pls and bared them to view, in deceitful ways.
We had decided not to visit Chicago that winter. The crop was fair, but prices were low on oats and corn, and my crops consisted mostly of those cereals. I tried to explain this to the Reverend when he talked of what we would have, Christmas, in Chicago.
"Now, don't let that worry you, my boy," he would say breezily. "I'll attend to that! I'll attend to that!"
"Attend to what?" I asked.
"Why, I'll send both of you a ticket."
"O, really, Reverend, I thank you ever so much, but I could not think of accepting it, and you must not urge it. We are not coming to Chicago, and I wish you would not talk of it so much with Orlean," I would almost plead with him. "She is a good girl and we are happy together. She wants to help me,but she's only a weak woman, and being so far away from colored people, she will naturally feel lonesome and want to visit home."
He paid no more attention to me than if I had never spoken. In fact, he talked more about Chicago than ever, saying a dozen times a day:
"Yes, children, I'll send you the money."
I finally became angry and told him I would not, under any circumstances whatever, accept such charity, and that what my money was invested in, represented a value of more than thirty thousand dollars, and how could I be expected to condescend to accept charity from him.
He had told me once that he never had as much as two hundred dollars at one time in his life. I did not want a row, but as far as I was concerned, I did not want anything from him, for I felt that he would throw it up to me the rest of his life. I was convinced that he was a vain creature, out for a show, and I fairly despised him for it.
At last he went home and Orlean and I got down to business, moving more of our goods onto the claim, and spending about one-third of the time there. We intended moving everything as soon as the corn was gathered. As Christmas drew near, her folks wrote they were looking for her to come home, the Reverend having told them that she was coming, and that he was going to send her the money for her to come. Her mother wrote about it in letter, saying she didn't think it was right. Just before Christmas, she wrote that maybe if she wrote Cousin Sam he would send her the money. Cousin Sam was a porter in a down town saloon. Ifelt so mortified that I swore I would never again have anything to do with her family. They never regarded my feelings nor our relations in the least, but wrote a letter every few days about who was coming to the house to see Orlean Christmas, of who was going to have her at their homes for dinner when she came home, until the poor girl, with a child on the way, was as helpless as a baby, trying to be honest with all concerned. It had never been her lot to take the defensive.
My sister came down from her claim and took Orlean home with her. While she was in Tipp county a letter came from her father for her, and thinking it might be a matter needing immediate attention, I opened it and found a money order for eighteen dollars, sent from Cairo, with instructions when to start, and he would be home to meet her when she arrived, suggesting that I could come later.
I was about the maddest man in Megory when I was through reading the letter, fairly flying to the post office, enclosing the money order and all, with a curt little note telling what I had done; that Orlean was out on her claim and would be home in a few days, but that we were not coming to Chicago. I would have liked to tell him that I was running my own house, but did not do so. I was hauling shelled corn to a feeder in town, when Orlean came. She was driving a black horse, hitched to a little buggy I had purchased for her, and I met her on the road. I got out and kissed her fondly, then told what I had done. My love for her had been growing. She had been gone a week and I was so glad to see herand have her back with me. I took the corn on into town and when I returned home she had cleaned up the house, prepared a nice supper and had killed a chicken for the next day, which was Christmas. She then confessed that she had written her father that he could send the money.
"Now, dear," she said, as though a little frightened, "I'm so sorry, for I know papa's going to make a big row."
And he did, fairly burned the mail with scorching letters denouncing my action and threatening what he was liable to do about it, which was to come out and attend to me. I judged he did not get much sympathy, however, for a little while after Orlean had written him he cooled down and wrote that whatever Orlean and I agreed on was all right with him, though I knew nothing of what her letter contained.
The holidays passed without further event, excepting a letter from Mrs. Ewis, to my wife, in which she said she was glad that she had stayed in Dakota and stuck by her husband. The letter seemed a little strange, though I thought nothing of it at the time. A few months later I was to know what it meant, which was more than I could then have dreamed of. We were a lone colored couple, in a country miles from any of our kind, honest, hopeful and happy; we had no warning, nor if we had, would we have believed. Why, indeed, should any young couple feel that some person, especially one near and dear, should be planning to put asunder what God had joined together?
It was now the last of February and we expectedour first-born in March. My wife had grown exceedingly fretful. Grandma was with us, having made proof on her homestead. Orlean kept worrying and wanting to go to her claim, talking so much about it, that I finally talked with some neighbor friends and they advised that it would be better to take her to the homestead, for if she continued to fret so much over wanting to be there, when the child was born, it might be injured in some way. When the weather became favorable, I wrapped her and grandma up comfortably, and sent them to the claim in the spring wagon, while I followed with a load of furniture, making the trip in a day and a half. We had close neighbors who said they would look after her while I went back after the stock. A lumber yard was selling out in Kirk, and I bought the coal shed, which was strongly built, being good for barns and granaries. Cutting it into two parts, I loaded one part onto two wagons and started the sixty miles to the claim. A thaw set in about the time I had the building as far as my homestead south of Megory. I decided to leave it there and tear down my old buildings and move them, instead. I received a letter from Orlean saying they were getting along nicely, excepting that the stove smoked considerably; and for me to be very careful with Red and not let him kick me. Red was a mule I had bought the summer before and was a holy terror for kicking.
My sister arrived that night from a visit to Kansas, and on hearing from Orlean that she was all right, I sent my sister on to her claim, and hiring more men, moved the balance of the building onto theold farm, tore down the old buildings, loaded them onto wagons, and finally got started again for Tipp county. That was on Saturday. The wind blew a gale, making me feel lonely and far from home. Sunday morning I started early out of Colone planning to get home that night, but the front axle broke and by the time we got another it was growing late. We started again and traveled about two miles, when the tongue broke, and by the time that was mended it was late in the afternoon. About six o'clock we pulled into Victor, tired and weary. The next day, when about five miles from home, we met one of the neighbors, who informed me that he had tried to get me over the phone all along the way; that my wife had been awfully sick and that the baby had been born, dead. It struck me like a hammer, and noting my frightened look, he spoke up quickly:
"But she's all right now. She had two doctors and didn't lack for attention."
On the way home I was so nervous that I could hardly wait for the horses to get there. I would not have been away at this time for anything in the world. I knew Orlean would forgive me, but we had not told her father. Orlean had told her mother and thought she would tell him. He made so much ado about everything, we hoped to avoid the tire of his burdensome letters, but now, with the baby born during my absence, and it dead, when we had so many plans for its future. It was to have been the first colored child born on the Little Crow, and we thought we were going to make history.
WhenI got to the claim I was weak in every way. My wife seemed none the worse, but my emotions were intense when I saw the little dead boy. Poor little fellow! As he lay stiff and cold I could see the image of myself in his features. My wife noticed my look and said:
"It is just like you, dear!"
That night we buried the baby on the west side of the draw. It should have been on the east, where the only trees in the township, four spreading willows, cast their shadows.
"Well, dear, we have each other," I comforted her as she cried.
Between sobs she tried to tell me how she had prayed for it to live, and since it had looked so much like me, she thought her heart would break.
When the child was born they had sent a telegram to her father which read:
"Baby born dead. Am well."
This was his first knowledge of it. We received a telegram that night that he was on the way and the next day he arrived, bringing Ethel with him. When he got out of the livery rig that brought them I could see Satan in his face. A chance had come to him at last. It seemed to say:
"Oh, now I'll fix you. Away when the child was born, eh?"
His very expression seemed jubilant. He had longed for some chance to get me and now it had arrived. He did not speak to me, but bounded into the room where my wife was, and she must have read the same thing in his expression, for, as he talked about it later, I learned the first thing she said was:
"Now,papa. You must not abuse Oscar. He loves me and is kind and doing the best he can, but he is all tied up with debt."
He would tell this every few hours but I could see the evil of his heart in the expression of his eyes, leering at me, with hatred and malice in every look. He and Ethel turned loose in about an hour. From that time on, it was the same as being in the house with two human devils. They nearly raised the roof with their quarreling. Of the two, the Reverend was the worst, for he was cunning and deceitful, pretending in one sentence to love, and in the next taking a thrust at my emotions and home. I shall never forget his evil eyes.
Ethel would cry out in her ringing voice:
"You're practical! You're practical! You and your Booker T. Washington ideas!"
Then she would tear into a string of abusive words. One day, after the doctor had been to the house, he called me aside and said:
"Oscar, your wife is physically well enough, but is mentally sick. Something should be done so that she may be more quiet."
"Is she quite out of danger?" I asked.
He replied that she was. That night I told my wife of our conversation and the next day I left for Megory county.
SANCTIMONIOUS HYPOCRISY