irginia and the
"Eastern Shore."

So, too, the city's position on the border line is reflected in its
handling of the negro. Of American cities, Washington has the largest
negro population, 94,446, New York and New Orleans follow with almost as
many, and Baltimore comes fourth with 84,749, according to the last
census. New York has one negro to every fifty-one whites, Philadelphia
one to every seventeen whites, Baltimore one to every six, Washington a
negro to every two and a half whites, and Richmond not quite two whites
to every negro. But, although Baltimore follows southern practice in
maintaining separate schools for negro children, and in segregating
negro residences to certain blocks, she follows northern practice in
casting a considerable negro vote at elections, and also in not
providing separate seats for negroes in her street cars.

Have you ever noticed how cities sometimes seem to have their own
especial colors? Paris is white and green--even more so, I think, than
Washington. Chicago is gray; so is London usually, though I have seen
it buff at the beginning of a heavy fog. New York used to be a brown
sandstone city, but is now turning to one of cream-colored brick and
tile; Naples is brilliant with pink and blue and green and white and
yellow; while as for Baltimore, her old houses and her new are, as
Baedeker puts it, of "cheerful red brick"--not always, of course, but
often enough to establish the color of red brick as the city's
predominating hue. And with the red-brick houses--particularly the older
ones--go clean white marble steps, on the bottom one of which, at the
side, may usually be found an old-fashioned iron "scraper," doubtless
left over from the time (not very long ago) when the city pavements had
not reached their present excellence.

The color of red brick is not confined to the center of the city, but
spreads to the suburbs, fashionable and unfashionable. At one margin of
the town I was shown solid blocks of pleasant red-brick houses which, I
was told, were occupied by workmen and their families, and were to be
had at a rental of from ten to twenty dollars a month. For though
Baltimore has a lower East Side which, like the lower East Side of New
York, encompasses the Ghetto and Italian quarter, she has not tenements
in the New York sense; one sees no tall, cheap flat houses draped with
fire escapes and built to make herding places for the poor. Many of the
houses in this section are ins