Miss Taylor found the Lake George colony charming. It was not ultra-fashionable, but it had wealth and leisure and some breeding. Especially was this true of a circumscribed, rather exclusive, set which centred around the Vanderpools of New York and Boston. They, or rather Mr. Vanderpool's connections, were of Old Dutch New York stock; his father it was who had built the Lake George cottage.
Mrs. Vanderpool was a Wells of Boston, and endured Lake George now and then during the summer for her husband's sake, although she regarded it all as rather a joke. This summer promised to be unusually lonesome for her, and she was meditating a retreat to the Massachusetts north shore when she chanced to meet Mary Taylor, at a miscellaneous dinner, and found her interesting. She discovered that this young woman knew things, that she could talk books, and that she was rather pretty. To be sure she knew no people, but Mrs. Vanderpool knew enough to even things.
"By the bye, I met some charming Alabama people last winter, in Montgomery--the Cresswells; do you know them?" she asked one day, as they were lounging in wicker chairs on the Vanderpool porch. Then she answered the query herself: "No, of course you could not. It is too bad that your work deprives you of the society of people of your class. Now my ideal is a set of Negro schools where the white teachers could know the Cresswells."
"Why, yes--" faltered Miss Taylor; "but--wouldn't that be difficult?"
"Why should it be?"
"I mean, would the Cresswells approve of educating Negroes?"
"Oh, 'educating'! The word conceals so much. Now, I take it the Cresswells would object to instructing them in French and in dinner etiquette and tea-gowns, and so, in fact, would I; but teach them how to handle a hoe and to sew and cook. I have reason to know that people like the Cresswells would be delighted."
"And with the teachers of it?"
"Why not?--provided, of course, they were--well, gentlefolk and associated accordingly."
"But one must associate with one's pupils."
"Oh, certainly, certainly; just as one must associate with one's maids and chauffeurs and dressmakers--cordially and kindly, but with a difference."
"But--but, dear Mrs. Vanderpool, you wouldn't want your children trained that way, would you?"
"Certainly not, my dear. But these are not my children, they are the children of Negroes; we can't quite forget that, can we?"
"No, I suppose not," Miss Taylor admitted, a little helplessly. "But--it seems to me--that's the modern idea of taking culture to the masses."
"Frankly, then, the modern idea is not my idea; it is too socialistic. And as for culture applied to the masses, you utter a paradox. The masses and work is the truth one must face."