ame, leaving the face as
marbly cold and impassive as ever. He rose and extended his hand,
"Why--why--ah--Bert, how de do, how are you?"

"Very well, I thank you, Mr. Featherton."

"Hum, I'm glad to see you back, sit down. Going to stay with us, you
think?"

"I'm not sure, Mr. Featherton; it all depends upon my getting
something to do."

"You want to go to work, do you? Hum, well, that's right. It's work
makes the man. What do you propose to do, now since you've graduated?"

Bert warmed at the evident interest of his old friend. "Well, in the
first place, Mr. Featherton," he replied, "I must get to work and make
some money. I have heard of fellows studying and supporting themselves
at the same time, but I musn't expect too much. I'm going to study
law."

The attorney had schooled his face into hiding any emotion he might
feel, and it did not betray him now. He only flashed one of his quick
cold smiles and asked,

"Don't you think you've taken rather a hard profession to get on in?"

"No doubt. But anything I should take would be hard. It's just like
this, Mr. Featherton," he went on, "I am willing to work and to work
hard, and I am not looking for any snap."

Mr. Featherton was so unresponsive to this outburst that Bert was
ashamed of it the minute it left his lips. He wished this man would
not be so cold and polite and he wished he would stop putting the ends
of his white fingers together as carefully as if something depended
upon it.

"I say the law is a hard profession to get on in, and as a friend I
say that it will be harder for you. Your people have not the money to
spend in litigation of any kind."

"I should not cater for the patronage of my own people alone."

"Yes, but the time has not come when a white person will employ a
colored attorney."

"Do you mean to say that the prejudice here at home is such that if I
were as competent as a white lawyer a white person would not employ
me?"

"I say nothing about prejudice at all. It's nature. They have their
own lawyers; why should they go outside of their own to employ a
colored man?"

"But I am of their own. I am an American citizen, there should be no
thought of color about it."

"Oh, my boy, that theory is very nice, but State University democracy
doesn't obtain in real life."

"More's the pity, then, for real life."

"Perhaps, but we must take things as we find them, not as we think
they ought to be. You people are having and will have