er as the one who really pays the taxes is not tenable. It
would be just as reasonable for the relatively few land owners of
Manhattan to complain that they had to stand the financial burden of
the education of the thousands and thousands of children whose parents
pay rent for tenements and flats. Let the millions of producing and
consuming Negroes be taken out of the South, and it would be quickly
seen how much less of public funds there would be to appropriate for
education or any other purpose.

In thus traveling about through the country I was sometimes amused
on arriving at some little railroad-station town to be taken for and
treated as a white man, and six hours later, when it was learned that
I was stopping at the house of the colored preacher or school teacher,
to note the attitude of the whole town change. At times this led even
to embarrassment. Yet it cannot be so embarrassing for a colored man
to be taken for white as for a white man to be taken for colored; and
I have heard of several cases of the latter kind.

All this while I was gathering material for work, jotting down in my
note-book themes and melodies, and trying to catch the spirit of the
Negro in his relatively primitive state. I began to feel the necessity
of hurrying so that I might get back to some city like Nashville to
begin my compositions and at the same time earn at least a living
by teaching and performing before my funds gave out. At the last
settlement in which I stopped I found a mine of material. This was due
to the fact that "big meeting" was in progress. "Big meeting" is an
institution something like camp-meeting, the difference being that it
is held in a permanent church, and not in a temporary structure. All
the churches of some one denomination--of course, either Methodist or
Baptist--in a county, or, perhaps, in several adjoining counties, are
closed, and the congregations unite at some centrally located church
for a series of meetings lasting a week. It is really a social as well
as a religious function. The people come in great numbers, making the
trip, according to their financial status, in buggies drawn by sleek,
fleet-footed mules, in ox-carts, or on foot. It was amusing to see
some of the latter class trudging down the hot and dusty road, with
their shoes, which were brand-new, strung across their shoulders. When
they got near the church, they sat on the side of the road and, with
many grimaces, tenderly packed their fee