Chapter II: Part ONE: American Beginning (2)

That afternoon with Max Eastman was spent in a critical estimation of my verse. He decided to publish a page of it. When I departed I left some of the verses but took with others the "If We Must Die" sonnet. I wanted Frank Harris, whom I had not seen for many months, to see it. I had always remembered his criticism and rejection of "The Lynching," and now I wanted to know if in "If We Must Die" I had "risen to the heights and stormed heaven," as he had said I should.

At that time _Pearson's Magazine_ had its office in the same building as _The Liberator_. Frank Harris had me ushered in as soon as I was announced. "And where have you been and what doing all this time, my lad?" he roared, fixing me with a lowering look. All his high exhibitionism could not conceal the frank friendliness and deep kindliness that were the best of him. "Now what have you done to be called a real poet, to join the ranks of the elect? Have you written a GREAT poem yet?" I produced "If We Must Die." He read it at once. Then he slapped his thigh and shouted, "Grand! Grand! You have done it. That _is_ a great poem, authentic fire and blood; blood pouring from a bleeding heart. I shall be proud to publish it in _Pearson's_."

I said that I was sorry, but the poem had already been accepted by _The Liberator_. "What? It belongs to me," Frank Harris thundered. "_The Liberator_ be damned! I gave you the inspiration to write that sonnet and I want to have the credit of publishing it. In the next number of _Pearson's_. I'll play it up big."

But I said I couldn't do that; I would have to ask Max Eastman's permission. "No, you won't," roared Frank Harris. "Do you think I am the kind of man to accept a favor from Max Eastman? Why did you bring your poem here, after showing it to him?" Because I wanted him to see what I had done, I said, because I valued his opinion so highly, perhaps more than any other critic's, because his unforgettable words that memorable night of our first meeting were like a fire alive in me, because I so much desired to know if he considered what I had written as an achievement. I was excited and spoke quickly and earnestly. Frank Harris melted a little, for what I said had pleased him. But he was none the less angry.

He informed me then that he had had a fight with _The Liberator_. He had published in _Pearson's_ an article about Lenin in which the Russian dictator was portrayed as a cosmopolitan _bon vivant_. It was a very exaggerated and wrong picture, and _The Liberator_, which had more accurate information about Lenin's private life from individuals who knew him, had severely criticized Frank Harris. He was sore about the criticism. He said that he and Max Eastman were both radical editors, and if he had made a mistake, _The Liberator_ might have asked him to correct it in _Pearson's_, instead of both editors denouncing each other in public. He said he was so disgusted that he was seeking other premises for his magazine, because he was uncomfortable housed in the same building as _The Liberator_ and all the time meeting its editor, even riding in the same elevator with him.

That incident alone was a revelation of the real Frank Harris under the hard protective shell, and shows that he was not such a natural buccaneer as some of his critics assert. He was so sensitive that he could not stand being in the same building with another editor, because they had quarreled.

I had not read the controversial articles then and knew nothing about the quarrel, and so I was very embarrassed, realizing that it was a mistake to show the poem to Frank Harris before it was published in _The Liberator_. I was keen about that poem appearing in _The Liberator_, because of that magazine's high literary and social standard. Although I esteemed Frank Harris as a great critic, _Pearson's_ was _his_ magazine only, a one-man magazine, smashingly critical, daringly so about social problems, yet having no constructive social program. But _The Liberator_ was a group magazine. The list of contributing editors was almost as exciting to read as the contributions themselves. There was a freeness and a bright new beauty in those contributions, pictorial and literary, that thrilled. And altogether, in their entirety, they were implicit of a penetrating social criticism which did not in the least overshadow their novel and sheer artistry. I rejoiced in the thought of the honor of appearing among that group.

Nevertheless I deferred a little to Frank Harris, and when I mailed the set of poems to Max Eastman a few days later, I kept back the "If We Must Die" sonnet. I figured that if Max Eastman overlooked its absence, I could conscientiously give it to Frank Harris. But Max Eastman sent me a telegram requesting the immediate return of the sonnet. The magazine had already gone to press and he wished to include it in the selection. I sent it in and "If We Must Die" appeared in _The Liberator_.

III

White Friends

The phrase "white friend" used by a Negro among Negroes is so significant in color and emotion, in creating a subtle feeling of social snobbery and superiority, that I have sometimes wondered what is the exact effect of "colored friend" when employed by a white among whites. I mean the sophisticated. I know the reactions and their nuances must be very different within the two groups. An experiment carried out in both groups to determine this would be as rarely illuminating as a scientific discovery to this Negro. But alas, what a pity that it is an impossibility, even as it is for a white reader to share with a black reader the magic inhering in "white friend" with all its implications. It may be partially understood only by comparing it with certain social honors and class distinctions which make for prestige, but it cannot be fully realized.

The peasants of Jamaica were always fond and faithful in friendships. Every boy and every man had a best friend, from whom he expected sympathy and understanding even more than from a near relative. Such a friend shared in confidences which were not revealed even to a brother. Early friendships were encouraged by our parents. And sometimes it was the friendship of youngsters that developed a fraternal feeling among the families of both.

There were few white friends in the social life of the peasants. The white colony agglomerated in the towns and the peasants were 80 per cent of a population of a million. And so the phrase "mah white folks" could not have the significance for a Jamaica peasant that it has for a southern Negro. There were a few settlements of poor whites in the land. They were mainly of German descent. Like the natives, they eked out a living as agriculturists and artisans, sharing in the common community life. The blacks were not sycophantic to them because of their pigmentation, nor did they treat them with contempt as "poor white trash."

Those were the social conditions in the country. In our only city they were different. In the city there were subtle social distinctions between white and light-colored and between light-colored and black. These distinctions were based upon real class differences which were fixed by the distribution of positions. Generally the whites were the ruling and upper class, the light-colored were the shop-keeping and clerical class, the blacks were the working class.

A peasant would be proud of a white friend who was influential. But from a social-asset point of view, he would place much more value upon the friendship of a light-colored person of the wealthy and educated class or of a black who had risen up out of the peasantry than he would upon that of an undistinguished "poor white."

My father was the trusted friend of Mr. Hathaway, the missionary who built up the first mission of our region. I remember my first impression of my father: a tall, graying man with an impressive luxuriantly kinky head. He was a prosperous enough peasant and settled on his own land. He was senior deacon of the church and something of a patriarch of the mountain country. My memory retains an unforgettable picture of him, often sitting out upon our barbecue and endeavoring to settle differences between the poorer peasants. For the peasants loved litigation and enjoyed bringing one another into the white man's court for very trivial offenses. My father always said: Try to settle your differences out of court, for the courts cost more than the cases are worth.

For the best part of my boyhood I was away from home going to school under my school-teacher brother. And when I had grown up a little and returned to the homestead I found my father estranged from the church. For five years he had never set foot on the church premises. After Mr. Hathaway there had been about five other missionaries, but the sixth, a Scotchman, turned out a bad egg, after seeming white and good outside. They said he was tricky and canny in petty things. He had falsified the church accounts and appropriated money that was intended for foreign missions. And he had discharged the native teacher and given the job to his wife.

My father quit the church. It went down to the devil. And the mountain country became a hell for that missionary. Even the children jeered at him along the roads when he went riding by. One by one his fellow missionaries turned from him, refusing to visit the mission, until he was isolated. At last he was compelled to go. When he was leaving, he came to my father's house and offered to shake hands. My father refused. He said the missionary had not acknowledged his error and he did not think his hands were clean just because they were white. But my mother cried and went out to the gate to the missionary's wife and they embraced.

I make this digression about white friendship and my father, because, like him, I have also had some white friends in my life, friends from the upper class, the middle class, the lower and the very lowest class. Maybe I have had more white than colored friends. Perhaps I have been impractical in putting the emotional above the social value of friendship, but neither the color of my friends, nor the color of their money, nor the color of their class has ever been of much significance to me. It was more the color of their minds, the warmth and depth of their sensibility and affection, that influenced me.

* * * * *

Apropos of white friendship, way back in 1912, when my _Songs of Jamaica_ was published, I received a letter from a man in Singapore praising my effort. This person had been corresponding with Mr. Jekyll about a scheme to establish an international utopian colony for intellectuals and creative talents. Mr. Jekyll, an individualistic aristocrat of the English squirearchy had rejected the idea for himself, saying he had no faith in sentimental and visionary nostrums. But he had carried on a correspondence with several persons who were interested.

Six years later, when my poems appeared in _Pearson's Magazine_, I heard from my Singapore correspondent again. He had arrived in San Francisco from Japan. He was intending to come to New York and hoped we would meet. In a few weeks he came and I was shocked out of my skin by the appearance of the apostle of the international cultural life. In my young romantic naïveté in the hill-top of Jamaica I had imagined him to be the personification of a knight-errant of esthetics, lustily fighting against conventionalism for a freer cultural and artistic expression. But the apostle was lank and limp and strangely gray-eyed and there was a grayness in his personality like the sensation of dry sponge. He appeared like an object out of place in space, as if the soul of existence had been taken out of his form and left him a kind of mummy. His voice sounded as if it were trained to suppress all emotion. And he walked like a conventionalized mannikin. I thought that man's vanity must be vastly greater than his intelligence when such an individual could imagine himself capable of being the inspirer of an international colony of happy humanity.

Mr. Gray's parentage was international--a mixture of Italian, German and other Nordic strains. He was born in the Orient. When the World War broke, he and his inseparable sister were living in a utopian colony of Europeans of different nationalities. But the colony had to be disbanded because the territory belonged to one of the Allied powers and some of the members were Germans, and there were national quarrels over the cause of the war.

I invited the Grays up to Harlem. They were interested in seeing the big Black Belt, but they did not like Harlem. They did not like New York. Mr. Gray said he was glad to locate me through _Pearson's_, and that he enjoyed the magazine as a whole. I said that Frank Harris would be delighted to hear that and he said he would like to meet Frank Harris. I promised him an introduction.

Mr. Gray praised me highly for my new poems. He thought them stronger and riper than the Jamaican dialect rhymes. And also he thought I should have enough leisure to write more. He thought it might be salutary if I could get away from the Black Belt for awhile. And he suggested a plan for me to make a trip abroad.

My surprise over the prompt proposal gave Mr. Gray a kind of self-satisfied amusement. I could tell by his faint sophisticated smile. From my background of hard routine realistic living, idealistic actions did not appear as simple to me as they did to Mr. Gray, who lived by them. His practical life was his lifelong interest in creative talents, the world leadership of intellectual idealists and the establishment of model colonies, out of which he expected a modern Utopia to develop. The World War had confused and disillusioned him a little, but he was still full of hope.

Yet much as I was ready for a holiday from Harlem and though the idea was a vast surprise, I did not accept it right away. I was interested to know the details. Mr. Gray's plan was that I should be the guest of himself and his sister on a trip to Spain, where I could spend a year, or even two, writing. They had lived in Spain before and thought that living there after the war would be more agreeable than in any other European country, because Spain had kept out of the World War.

Miss Gray's resemblance to her brother was striking. They looked like twins. She was almost as tall, but she was physically stronger and more prepossessing. Much as I wanted that holiday, I had my doubts that I could be comfortable, much less happy, as their guest. So I said that I would like some time to think the matter over. And they agreed that I should first do a little thinking. But the tone of their voices and of their faces seemed to show that they were certain that I would finally say yes.

I had recently quit my job as waiter on the Pennsylvania Railroad, when the Grays arrived in New York. Thus I had plenty of time to spend with them. I was fortunate in not needing to worry about the expense of food. We ate in Harlem and downtown in the Automat restaurants. I visited them in their rooms in their downtown hotel. When I appeared at the desk, the clerk spoke before I did: "Oh, yes, you are the colored visitor from abroad. Mr. Gray is expecting you, just step into the elevator."

I had lots of time and opportunity to find out whether I would enjoy being a long-time guest of the Grays. And reluctantly I came to the conclusion that I couldn't. For their ideals I had the highest esteem and I was touched by their generosity. But between them and me there was a great disparity of temperament and outlook, a vast difference in seeing and in feeling the colors of life. I felt convinced that a long intimate association would strain disastrously, and perhaps break, our friendship.

Yet I was tantalized by the thought of a vacation in Spain. For West Indians it is the romantic European country, which gave the Caribbean islands their early names and terribly exciting tales of caribs and conquistadors, buccaneers and golden galleons and sugar-cane, rum and African slaves.

I thought I would try taking a little advice. At that time I knew nobody among the Negro intellectuals, excepting Hubert Harrison. Hubert Harrison was a lecturer on the sidewalks of Harlem. He lectured on free-thought, socialism and racialism, and sold books. He spoke precisely and clearly, with fine intelligence and masses of facts. He was very black, compact of figure, and his head resembled an African replica of Socrates.

He came from one of the Virgin Islands. He used to lecture in Wall Street. A group of Jews became interested and brought him to lecture in a hall in One Hundred Twenty-fifth Street. For a time he was the black hope of the Socialists. Then he gave up Socialism for the Garvey pan-African movement.

I explained my dilemma to Harrison and he said I was a fool to hesitate; that I was too conscientious. In civilized life it was not necessary for one to like one's hosts, he pointed out. Harrison said he would like to talk the plan over with me and Mr. Gray. So I got him and Mr. Gray together at dinner at a little South Carolina cookshop which was good for its special hog food.

Harrison talked to Mr. Gray mostly about the pan-African movement. He had a similar idea, he said, but Garvey, being more spectacular, had run away with it. He told Mr. Gray that he was performing a gracious act by taking me to Europe; that he himself had lived abroad in Denmark and Japan, and the experience had helped him in his later work. He avoided any mention of my real feelings about taking the trip, and I didn't know how to express what I really felt. Finally Harrison got a personal donation of fifty dollars from Mr. Gray to help in the work of black enlightenment.

I had to fall back upon myself in making a decision. When I did, informing Mr. Gray of all my doubts about the project, he was as surprised as I had been when he first mentioned the subject. Our contacts were all so easy and pleasant, he had not reckoned on the objections. I tried to make him see as I did that a close association would be quite a different thing from polite social contact.

When I told Hubert Harrison what I had done, he exclaimed that I was an impossible poet. But soon after I received a letter from Mr. Gray. He said that both he and his sister appreciated my frankness, especially because of the duplicity they had experienced in their efforts to found a community of free spirits. As an alternative he offered me a brief vacation abroad, regretting that the decrease of his income because of the war did not permit him to make it a long vacation. As the Grays were going to Spain and I did not want to appear as if I were deliberately avoiding traveling with them, I chose going to England.

I had promised Mr. Gray an introduction to Frank Harris, and we were invited to his house one afternoon. Frank Harris in his sitting room was obscured by the bulk of another visitor who resembled an enormous slug. Every gesture he made, every word he uttered, was a gesture of crawling at the feet of Harris, whom he addressed as "Master, Dear Master." And Frank Harris appeared pleased like a little boy who takes all the credit for a brave deed that others helped him to perform. The scene disconcerted me. I could not understand how a man so forthright in his opinion as Frank Harris could swallow all of that thick cloying syrup of insincerity. But he certainly did, and with relish, rubbing his hands and nodding his head. The phrases poured heavily out of the huge man's boneless jaws, nauseating the atmosphere: "Dear master, you are the world's greatest teacher and martyr since Jesus. The pharisees are against you, Master, but your disciples are loyal." Frank Harris said that he was quite aware of that. If he were in France he would be called universally _cher maître_, like Anatole France, but a true king had no honor among the Anglo-Saxon peoples.

Frank Harris then spoke of his long and unsuccessful fight against injustice, and he emphasized the Boer War, the Oscar Wilde case, and the World War. And whenever he paused the disciple filled in with "Yes, Master ... dear Master."

The visit ended with Mr. Gray being sold a set of Frank Harris's books and his taking out a year's subscription for _Pearson's_.

But before I left Frank Harris asked if there were anything he could do for me in London. He could not do much by way of personal introduction he said, because all his friends there had become enemies. I said the only person I was keen about meeting was Bernard Shaw. Well chosen, Frank Harris said, and gave me a letter introducing me to Bernard Shaw.

IV

Another White Friend

I had already bought my ticket, when a few days before the date of sailing I received a letter containing a soiled scrap bearing one of my poems, which had been reprinted in the New York _Tribune_. The letter was from another white friend, quite different from those before mentioned.

Ours was a curious friendship and this was the way it came about. Coming off the dining car one night, I went with another waiter to his home in one of the West Forties. His wife had company and we played cards until a late hour.

When I left I went to eat in a Greek place on Sixth Avenue. While I was waiting for the steak and looking at a newspaper, a young fellow came in, sat down at my table, and taking my cap from the chair, put it on. Before I could say a word about such a surprising thing, he said in a low, nervous voice: "It's all right, let me wear your cap. The bulls are right after me and I am trying to fool them. They won't recognize me sitting here with you, for I was bareheaded."

The Greek came with my steak and asked what the fellow wanted. He said, "A cup of coffee." He was twenty-three, of average height and size, and his kitelike face was decent enough. I saw no bulls, but didn't mind his hiding against me at all if he could get away that way. Naturally, I was curious. So I asked where the bulls had got after him, and why. He said it was down in the subway lavatory, when he was attempting to pick a man's pocket. He was refreshingly frank about it. There were three of them and he had escaped by a ruse that cannot be told.

He was hungry and I told him to order food. He became confidential. His name was Michael. He was a little pickpocket and did his tricks most of the time in the subways and parks. He got at his victims while they were asleep in the park or by getting friendly with them. He told me some illuminating things about the bulls, and so realistically that I saw them like wild bulls driving their horns into any object.

When I was leaving the restaurant, Michael asked if he could come up to Harlem, just to get away from downtown. I said that it was all right with me. Thus Michael came to Harlem.

The next morning when Manda, my girl friend, pushed the door open and saw Michael on the couch she exclaimed: "Foh the land's sake! I wonder what will happen next!" That was the most excitable state I had ever seen her in since our friendship began. I told her Michael was a friend in trouble and I was helping him out for awhile. She accepted the explanation and was not curious to know what the trouble was about. Like most colored southerners, she was hostile to "poor white trash," and the situation must not have been to her liking, but she took it as she did me. There was always a certain strangeness between Manda and me. Perhaps that helped our getting along comfortably together.

Manda was a pleasant placid girl from the Virginia country. She also was the result of a strange meeting. One late evening, when I got off the train, I ran into two of the fellows (an elevator runner and a waiter) who had worked with me at the women's club. We decided to give an impromptu party. It was too late to get any nice girls. So we said, "Let's go down to Leroy's and pick up some." Leroy's was the famous cellar cabaret at the corner of One Hundred Thirty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, and Harlem called it "The Jungle." Leroy's was one of the cabarets where you could make friends. Fellows could flirt with girls and change tables to sit with them. In those days the more decorous cabarets would not allow visiting between tables.

We knew the kind of girls to approach. In the Harlem cabaret of that time (before Van Vechten's _Nigger Heaven_ and prohibition made the colored intelligentsia cabaret-minded) there were generally three types of girls. There were the lady entertainers who flirted with the fellows impersonally to obtain nice tips and get them to buy extra drinks to promote the business of the house. Some of them were respectably married and had husbands who worked in the cabarets as waiters or musicians.

Another class of girls was more personally business-like in flirting. They didn't make the fellows spend too much in the cabaret, and had a preference for beer as a treat, for they expected them to spend on the outside. They were easily distinguishable by the confederate looks that passed between them and their protectors, who usually sat at separate tables.

And there were the lonely girls, the kitchen maids, laundresses and general day workers for New York's lower middle classes, who came for entertainment and hoping to make a friend from some casual acquaintance they might pick up.

Five of us went down to Leroy's. We noticed three girls of the last-mentioned type sitting together, chummy over large glasses of beer. We got their eyes. They were friendly, and we went over to their table. A waiter brought more chairs. We ordered a round of drinks, and, without palavering, we told the girls that we were seeking partners for a party. They were willing to join us. As we got up to go, we noticed at a neighboring table another girl all alone and smiling at us. She had heard our overtures. She was different from the girls who were going with us, not chic, brown with a plump figure, and there was a domestic something about her which created the impression of a good hen.

The elevator operator, who was a prankish fellow, challenged the girl's smile with a big grin and said: "Let's ask her too." The three girls giggled. The other girl was so odd--her clothes were dated and the colors didn't match. But she wanted to come, and that astonished them. We thought she was a West Indian, and were surprised to find out that she was from the South.

We all went to my room in One Hundred Thirty-first Street, where we had a breakdown. In the party Manda was as different as she looked. She lacked vivacity, and since the other fellows preferred the nimbler girls, I had to dance with her most of the time. As host, I did not want her to feel out of the fun. She made herself useful, though, washing the glasses when they got soiled and mixed up, and squeezing lemons for the gin.

By dawn we were tired and everybody was leaving. But Manda said she would stay awhile and clean up. She wasn't going to work that day and I wasn't either. From then on we became intimate friends. She was a real peasant type and worked as a laundress in a boarding house. She always came to look me up when I got in from a trip. She had a room in One Hundred Thirty-third Street near Fifth Avenue, but I went there only once. I didn't like its lacey and frilly baby-ribboned things and the pink counterpane on the bed.

We didn't have a lot to say to each other. When she tidied the room she was careful about the sheets of paper on which I was writing. And if she came when I was writing or reading she would leave me alone and go into the basement to cook. There is always an unfamiliar something between people of different countries and nationalities, however intimate they may become. And that something between me and Manda helped rather than hindered our relationship. It made her accept little eccentricities on my part--such as the friendship with Michael, for instance. And so we sailed smoothly along for a couple of years. Manda was a good balance to my nervous self.

The cabarets of Harlem in those days enthralled me more than any theater downtown. They were so intimate. If they were lacking in variety they were rich in warmth and native excitement. At that time the hub of Harlem was One Hundred Thirty-fifth Street between Fifth Avenue and Seventh. Between Seventh Avenue and Eighth the population was still white. The saloons were run by the Irish, the restaurants by the Greeks, the ice and fruit stands by the Italians, the grocery and haberdashery stores by the Jews. The only Negro businesses, excepting barber shops, were the churches and the cabarets. And Negro Harlem extended from One Hundred Thirtieth to One Hundred Forty-fifth Streets, bounded on the East by Madison Avenue and on the West by Seventh Avenue. There, coming off the road like homing birds, we trainmen came to rest awhile and fraternize with our friends in the city--elevator runners and porters--and snatch from saloon and cabaret and home a few brief moments of pleasure, of friendship and of love.

On the morning after my meeting with Michael, Manda said she had been to see me twice the night before. She had telephoned the commissary and was told that my dining car was in. She went to the kitchen in the basement and prepared a big breakfast of ham and eggs and fried potatoes with coffee. I asked Mr. Morris, my landlord, to join us, for I wanted to introduce Michael to him.

He, too, had no liking for "poor white trash." He was a strapping light-brown man and doing well with the lease of two private houses and an interest in one of the few Negro-owned saloons. He came from the South, but had been living many years in the North. When he was a young man in the South, he had "sassed" a white man. And for that he was struck. He struck back, and barely escaped with his life. He was a kind landlord and a pleasant mixer, especially in saloons. But he could be bitter when he got to talking about the South. He was decent to Michael, who was a northerner, for my sake. I had been his tenant for a long time and I exercised the freedom of a friend in that house. We drank together and I got my friends sometimes to patronize his saloon (thus contributing my little to help Negro business).

So Michael came to make Harlem his hideout, while he performed his petty tricks downtown. I told Mr. Morris and Manda that he was the ne'er-do-well son of a former boss, and had taken a liking to me. Whatever they really thought of him I never knew, for they never said. But they were aware that our relationship was not a literary one; they knew that he was not one of those white folks who were interested in the pattern of words I was always making. For Michael made no pretense of being intellectual. However, they liked him, for there was a disarming cleanliness and wholesomeness about his appearance, so that they never imagined that he was what he was. And it would never have occurred to them that I could be friendly with a crook. One never can tell about appearances, and so we all make mistakes by it. For example, when some of my strutting railroad friends came to know Manda, they couldn't believe their eyes: seeing is less penetrating than feeling.

When I was away on the railroad, Michael used my place if he needed it. He did not have a key, but I instructed Morris to let him in. I never felt any concern about anything, although I had some dandy suits in my closet and three Liberty Bonds in my trunk. Michael was profoundly sentimental about friendship, the friends of his friend, and anyone who had befriended him. He could even feel a little sorry for some of his victims after he had robbed them. That was evident from the manner in which he talked about their embarrassment. His deep hatred was directed against the bulls, and his mind was always occupied with outwitting and playing tricks on them. There were two classes of them, he said: the burly-brute, heavy-jawed type, which was easy to pick out, and the dapper college-student type, which was the more dangerous. He said that the best victims to single out were men in spectacles, but that sometimes the bulls disguised themselves and looked Harold Lloydish.

When Michael had no money he ate at the house. The landlord and Manda were sympathetic. At least they could understand that a wild and perhaps disinherited scion might be reduced to a state of hunger. The tabloids often carried sentimental stuff about such personages. When Michael had something he was extravagant. I remember one day when he brought in a fine ham. Manda cooked it in delicious Virginia style, thinking, as she said, that Michael's father had relented and that we were eating a slice of his inheritance. Michael and I exchanged looks. I felt like saying something impish to stir up Manda's suspicion. But Michael was now well established as a disinherited son instead of a "poor white trash" and I decided not to risk upsetting his position.

Also I was fond of Manda and had no desire to disturb her black Baptist conscience. She was a good woman. When she did my shirt and things in the laundry of the house where she worked, she bought her own soap and utilized her own spare time. And she would never take home any discarded rags or scraps of food that were not actually given to her.

Michael didn't hit it off so well with the fellows from the railroad, though, except for the lackadaisical one, who liked everybody. Michael was not a boozer, nor hard-boiled. In appearance he was like a nice college student. He was brought up in a Catholic home for boys which was located somewhere in Pennsylvania. He was put in there when he was about nine and kept there for twelve years.... Oh yes, and besides bulls, he hated priests and the Catholic Church.

I liked him most when he was telling about his escapades. There was that big-time representative of an ancient business who had his bags checked in the Grand Central Terminal. Michael managed to get the ticket away from him and refused to give it back unless the man paid twenty-five dollars. The man did not have the money on him and was afraid of a scandal. He had to telephone a friend for it and was even ashamed to do that. He walked along Broadway with Michael until they found a drugstore from which he could telephone. And he begged the lad to remain out of sight, so that his friend should not think the money was for him. "Gee!" Michael said. "And I was scared crazy all the time, thinking he would call a cop and have me arrested. But I faced it out and got the dough. The big stiff."

And there was the circus performer who had all his money at home. So Michael went along with him to get his. But when the actor got in, he sent his wife out, and she chased Michael with a rolling pin.

One afternoon, as I was dressing to go to work, I was suddenly made self-conscious by Michael remarking: "If I had your physique, I wouldn't work."

"What would you be, then," I asked, "a boxer?"

"Hell, no, that's too much bruising work, and only the big fists are in the money."

"Well, you should worry," I said, "if you haven't a swell physique. You don't work anyway."

"Oh, I'm different; but you--well, it's queer, you liking a woman like Manda."

"Why, I thought you liked her," I said. "She's nice to you."

"I know she is, and she's a fine one all right; but that's not what I mean. I mean she's so homely, she couldn't do any hustling to help you out. See what I mean?"

"Ugly is but lovely does," I said.

"That's nothing," he said.

"A whole lot more than you think," I said.

"Money is everything," he said. "When I have money I get me a pretty woman."

"Every man has his style and his limit," I said. "I prefer my way to yours."

"I know that without your saying so. Say, you don't like the way I live, eh? Be frank."

"I never said anything about that," I said.

"But you wouldn't live the way I do, would you?"

"Perhaps because I can't. One must find a way somehow between the possible and the impossible."

"But ain't it hell to be a slave on a lousy job?"

When I made no answer he went on: "Do you think you'll ever get a raise out of your writing?"

"I don't know. I might. Anyway, my writing makes it possible for me to stand being a slave on a lousy job."

Weeks passed sometimes and I never saw Michael, although he was often in Harlem, for usually when I was in he was out. He was as busy at his job as I was on mine, with shiploads of soldiers returning from Europe and the railroad service engaged to its utmost capacity. Doubling-out became like a part of the regular schedule, there was so much of it.

One day when I was in the city Michael dropped in. Seeing a revolver on the table, he asked what was the meaning of it. I said that the revolver had been in my possession for some years, ever since I used to manage an eating place in a tough district of Brooklyn. But why was I carrying it, he asked, when it might get me into trouble with the police? He never carried one himself, although his was a dangerous trade, for he was safer without it if he were picked up by the bulls.

I explained that I, like the rest of my crew, was carrying the revolver for self-defense, because of the tightened tension between the colored and the white population all over the country. Stopping-over in strange cities, we trainmen were obliged to pass through some of the toughest quarters and we had to be on guard against the suddenly aroused hostility of the mob. There had been bloody outbreak after outbreak in Omaha, Chicago, and Washington, and any crazy bomb might blow up New York even. I walked over to a window and looked out on the back yard.

Michael said: "And if a riot broke in Harlem and I got caught up here, I guess I'd get killed maybe."

"And if it were downtown and I was caught in it?" said I, turning round.

Michael said: "And if there were trouble here like that in Chicago between colored and white, I on my side and you on yours, we might both be shooting at one another, eh?"

"It was like that during the war that's just ended," I said, "brother against brother and friend against friend. They were all flapped in it and they were all helpless."

I turned my back again and leaned out of the window, thinking how in times of acute crisis the finest individual thoughts and feelings may be reduced to nothing before the blind brute forces of tigerish tribalism which remain at the core of civilized society.

When I looked up Michael was gone.

There was nearly three months' silence between us after that. It was broken at last by the pencilled scrawl and newspaper clipping which I mentioned earlier. Immediately I wrote to Michael, telling him that I had quit the railroad and was going abroad and that I would like to see him before leaving.

He came one evening. Manda made a mess of fried chicken, and we had a reunion with my landlord and Hubert Harrison, who was accompanied by a European person, a radical or bohemian, or perhaps both.

Hubert Harrison entertained us with a little monologue on going abroad. He was sure the trip would do me good, although it would have been wiser for me to accept the original proposal, he said. He asked me to send him articles from abroad for the _Negro World_ (the organ of the Back-to-Africa Movement) which he was editing.

At first Michael was uneasy, listening to our literary conversation. He had never heard me being intellectual. And he was quite awed by the fact that it was pure poetry and not a fine physique that had given me a raise so quickly. He thought that that poem in the New York _Tribune_ had had something to do with it. And with a little more liquor he relaxed and amused us by telling of his sensations when he saw that poem over my name in the newspaper. And then he surprised me by saying that he was thinking about getting a job.

The European woman was charmed by the novel environment and she idealized Michael as an American proletarian. She thought that Michael was significant as a symbol of the unity of the white and black proletariat. But when she asked Michael what division of the working class he belonged to, he appeared embarrassed. After dinner we went for awhile to Connor's Cabaret, which was the most entertaining colored cabaret in Harlem at that time.

Michael came down to the boat the day I sailed. Mr. Gray also was at the pier. I introduced them. Mr. Gray was aware that Michael was poor, and whispered to me, asking if he might give him something. I said, "Sure." He gave Michael ten dollars.

As the boat moved away from the pier, they were standing together. And suddenly I felt alarmed about Mr. Gray and wondered if I should not have warned him about Michael. I thought that if I were not on the scene, Michael might not consider himself bound by our friendship not to prey upon Mr. Gray. But my fear was merely a wild scare. Michael was perfect all the way through and nothing untoward happened.