Just At Present An Ex-Judge Who
Was Sent To Jail By Another Judge (Upon My Word I Cannot Tell
Whether These Titles Mean Anything) Is Breathing Red-Hot
Vengeance Against His Enemy.
The papers have interviewed both
parties, and confidently expect a fatal issue.
Now, let me draw breath and curse the negro waiter, and through
him the negro in service generally. He has been made a citizen
with a vote, consequently both political parties play with him.
But that is neither here nor there. He will commit in one meal
every betise that a senllion fresh from the plow-tail is capable
of, and he will continue to repeat those faults. He is as
complete a heavy-footed, uncomprehending, bungle-fisted fool as
any mem-sahib in the East ever took into her establishment. But
he is according to law a free and independent
citizen - consequently above reproof or criticism. He, and he
alone, in this insane city, will wait at table (the Chinaman
doesn't count).
He is untrained, inept, but he will fill the place and draw the
pay. Now, God and his father's fate made him intellectually
inferior to the Oriental. He insists on pretending that he serves
tables by accident - as a sort of amusement. He wishes you to
understand this little fact. You wish to eat your meals, and, if
possible, to have them properly served. He is a big, black, vain
baby and a man rolled into one.
A colored gentleman who insisted on getting me pie when I wanted
something else, demanded information about India. I gave him
some facts about wages.
"Oh, hell!" said he, cheerfully, "that wouldn't keep me in cigars
for a month."
Then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece. Later he took it upon
himself to pity the natives of India. "Heathens," he called
them - this woolly one, whose race has been the butt of every
comedy on the native stage since the beginning. And I turned and
saw by the head upon his shoulders that he was a Yoruba man, if
there be any truth in ethnological castes. He did his thinking
in English, but he was a Yoruba negro, and the race type had
remained the same through-out his generations. And the room was
full of other races - some that looked exactly like Gallas (but
the trade was never recruited from that side of Africa), some
duplicates of Cameroon heads, and some Kroomen, if ever Kroomen
wore evening dress.
The American does not consider little matters of descent, though
by this time he ought to know all about "damnable heredity." As
a general rule he keeps himself very far from the negro, and says
things about him that are not pretty. There are six million
negroes, more or less, in the States, and they are increasing.
The American, once having made them citizens, cannot unmake them.
He says, in his newspapers, they ought to be elevated by
education. He is trying this, but it is likely to be a long job,
because black blood is much more adhesive than white, and throws
back with annoying persistence.
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