de awaits!" He hurried the
bishop to the waiting limousine, asking him anxiously: "Did you hear
anything? Do you hear that noise? The crowd is growing strangely on the
streets and there seems to be a fire over toward the East. I never saw
so many people here--I fear violence--a mob--a lynching--I fear--hark!"

What was that which he, too, heard beneath the rhythm of unnumbered
feet? Deep in his heart a wonder grew. What was it? Ah, he knew! It was
music,--some strong and mighty chord. It rose higher as the
brilliantly-lighted church split the night, and swept radiantly toward
them. So high and clear that music flew, it seemed above, around, behind
them. The governor, ashen-faced, crouched in the car; but the bishop
said softly as the ecstasy pulsed in his heart:

"Such music, such wedding music! What choir is it?"

V

"THE SERVANT IN THE HOUSE"

The lady looked at me severely; I glanced away. I had addressed the
little audience at some length on the disfranchisement of my people in
society, politics, and industry and had studiously avoided the while her
cold, green eye. I finished and shook weary hands, while she lay in
wait. I knew what was coming and braced my soul.

"Do you know where I can get a good colored cook?" she asked. I
disclaimed all guilty concupiscence. She came nearer and spitefully
shook a finger in my face.

"Why--won't--Negroes--work!" she panted. "I have given money for years
to Hampton and Tuskegee and yet I can't get decent servants. They won't
try. They're lazy! They're unreliable! They're impudent and they leave
without notice. They all want to be lawyers and doctors and" (she spat
the word in venom) "ladies!"

"God forbid!" I answered solemnly, and then being of gentle birth, and
unminded to strike a defenseless female of uncertain years, I ran; I ran
home and wrote a chapter in my book and this is it.

* * * * *

I speak and speak bitterly as a servant and a servant's son, for my
mother spent five or more years of her life as a menial; my father's
family escaped, although grandfather as a boat steward had to fight hard
to be a man and not a lackey. He fought and won. My mother's folk,
however, during my childhood, sat poised on that thin edge between the
farmer and the menial. The surrounding Irish had two chances, the
factory and the kitchen, and most of them took the factory, with all its
dirt and noise and low wage. The factory was closed to