Miss Mary Taylor did not take a college course for the purpose of teaching Negroes. Not that she objected to Negroes as human beings--quite the contrary. In the debate between the senior societies her defence of the Fifteenth Amendment had been not only a notable bit of reasoning, but delivered with real enthusiasm. Nevertheless, when the end of the summer came and the only opening facing her was the teaching of children at Miss Smith's experiment in the Alabama swamps, it must be frankly confessed that Miss Taylor was disappointed.
Her dream had been a post-graduate course at Bryn Mawr; but that was out of the question until money was earned. She had pictured herself earning this by teaching one or two of her "specialties" in some private school near New York or Boston, or even in a Western college. The South she had not thought of seriously; and yet, knowing of its delightful hospitality and mild climate, she was not averse to Charleston or New Orleans. But from the offer that came to teach Negroes--country Negroes, and little ones at that--she shrank, and, indeed, probably would have refused it out of hand had it not been for her queer brother, John. John Taylor, who had supported her through college, was interested in cotton. Having certain schemes in mind, he had been struck by the fact that the Smith School was in the midst of the Alabama cotton-belt.
"Better go," he had counselled, sententiously. "Might learn something useful down there."
She had been not a little dismayed by the outlook, and had protested against his blunt insistence.
"But, John, there's no society--just elementary work--"
John had met this objection with, "Humph!" as he left for his office. Next day he had returned to the subject.
"Been looking up Tooms County. Find some Cresswells there--big plantations--rated at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Some others, too; big cotton county."
"You ought to know, John, if I teach Negroes I'll scarcely see much of people in my own class."
"Nonsense! Butt in. Show off. Give 'em your Greek--and study Cotton. At any rate, I say go."
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.