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
