Darkwater | Page 6

done.
I _wished!_ The wish came true.
Now and then out of the void flashed the great sword of hate to remind
me of the battle. I remember once, in Nashville, brushing by accident
against a white woman on the street. Politely and eagerly I raised my
hat to apologize. That was thirty-five years ago. From that day to this I
have never knowingly raised my hat to a Southern white woman.
I suspect that beneath all of my seeming triumphs there were many
failures and disappointments, but the realities loomed so large that they
swept away even the memory of other dreams and wishes. Consider,
for a moment, how miraculous it all was to a boy of seventeen, just
escaped from a narrow valley: I willed and lo! my people came dancing
about me,--riotous in color, gay in laughter, full of sympathy, need, and
pleading; darkly delicious girls--"colored" girls--sat beside me and
actually talked to me while I gazed in tongue-tied silence or babbled in
boastful dreams. Boys with my own experiences and out of my own
world, who knew and understood, wrought out with me great remedies.
I studied eagerly under teachers who bent in subtle sympathy, feeling
themselves some shadow of the Veil and lifting it gently that we darker
souls might peer through to other worlds.
I willed and lo! I was walking beneath the elms of Harvard,--the name
of allurement, the college of my youngest, wildest visions! I needed
money; scholarships and prizes fell into my lap,--not all I wanted or
strove for, but all I needed to keep in school. Commencement came and

standing before governor, president, and grave, gowned men, I told
them certain astonishing truths, waving my arms and breathing fast!
They applauded with what now seems to me uncalled-for fervor, but
then! I walked home on pink clouds of glory! I asked for a fellowship
and got it. I announced my plan of studying in Germany, but Harvard
had no more fellowships for me. A friend, however, told me of the
Slater Fund and how the Board was looking for colored men worth
educating. No thought of modest hesitation occurred to me. I rushed at
the chance.
The trustees of the Slater Fund excused themselves politely. They
acknowledged that they had in the past looked for colored boys of
ability to educate, but, being unsuccessful, they had stopped searching.
I went at them hammer and tongs! I plied them with testimonials and
mid-year and final marks. I intimated plainly, impudently, that they
were "stalling"! In vain did the chairman, Ex-President Hayes, explain
and excuse. I took no excuses and brushed explanations aside. I wonder
now that he did not brush me aside, too, as a conceited meddler, but
instead he smiled and surrendered.
I crossed the ocean in a trance. Always I seemed to be saying, "It is not
real; I must be dreaming!" I can live it again--the little, Dutch ship--the
blue waters--the smell of new-mown hay--Holland and the Rhine. I saw
the Wartburg and Berlin; I made the Harzreise and climbed the
Brocken; I saw the Hansa towns and the cities and dorfs of South
Germany; I saw the Alps at Berne, the Cathedral at Milan, Florence,
Rome, Venice, Vienna, and Pesth; I looked on the boundaries of Russia;
and I sat in Paris and London.
On mountain and valley, in home and school, I met men and women as
I had never met them before. Slowly they became, not white folks, but
folks. The unity beneath all life clutched me. I was not less fanatically a
Negro, but "Negro" meant a greater, broader sense of humanity and
world-fellowship. I felt myself standing, not against the world, but
simply against American narrowness and color prejudice, with the
greater, finer world at my back urging me on.
I builded great castles in Spain and lived therein. I dreamed and loved

and wandered and sang; then, after two long years, I dropped suddenly
back into "nigger"-hating America!
My Days of Disillusion were not disappointing enough to discourage
me. I was still upheld by that fund of infinite faith, although dimly
about me I saw the shadow of disaster. I began to realize how much of
what I had called Will and Ability was sheer Luck! _Suppose_ my
good mother had preferred a steady income from my child labor rather
than bank on the precarious dividend of my higher training? _Suppose_
that pompous old village judge, whose dignity we often ruffled and
whose apples we stole, had had his way and sent me while a child to a
"reform" school to learn a "trade"? _Suppose_ Principal Hosmer had
been born with no faith in "darkies," and instead of giving me Greek
and Latin had taught me carpentry and the making of tin pans?
_Suppose_