‚ÄúBut, John, there‚Äôs no society‚ÅÝ‚Äîjust elementary work‚ÅÝ‚Äî‚Äù
John had met this objection with, “Humph!” as he left for his office. Next day he had returned to the subject.
‚ÄúBeen looking up Tooms County. Find some Cresswells there‚ÅÝ‚Äîbig plantations‚ÅÝ‚Äîrated at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Some others, too; big cotton county.‚Äù
“You ought to know, John, if I teach Negroes I’ll scarcely see much of people in my own class.”
‚ÄúNonsense! Butt in. Show off. Give ‚Äôem your Greek‚ÅÝ‚Äîand study Cotton. At any rate, I say go.‚Äù
And so, howsoever reluctantly, she had gone.
The trial was all she had anticipated, and possibly a bit more. She was a pretty young woman of twenty-three, fair and rather daintily moulded. In favorable surroundings, she would have been an aristocrat and an epicure. Here she was teaching dirty children, and the smell of confused odors and bodily perspiration was to her at times unbearable.
Then there was the fact of their color: it was a fact so insistent, so fatal she almost said at times, that she could not escape it. Theoretically she had always treated it with disdainful ease.
‚ÄúWhat‚Äôs the mere color of a human soul‚Äôs skin,‚Äù she had cried to a Wellesley audience and the audience had applauded with enthusiasm. But here in Alabama, brought closely and intimately in touch with these dark skinned children, their color struck her at first with a sort of terror‚ÅÝ‚Äîit seemed ominous and forbidding. She found herself shrinking away and gripping herself lest they should perceive. She could not help but think that in most other things they were as different