awakening of implicit trust and confidence. I personally found the Negroes nearly always friendly. Mr. B—— was a sparely-colored, lean, intellectual young man, a capable white man in a veil of dark skin. He was all but white. I looked at his webby hands—what a pity, it seemed, that, being so near, he could not be altogether. And yet I realized that in such men and women, no matter how fair they be, the psyche is different. There is something intensely and insolubly Negro in even the nearest of near whites. Rev. B—— took me all over the city. He was evidently extremely well known to the colored people, for our conversation was intertwined with a ceaseless—— [37] [37] “How do, Revrun?” “How do?” He showed me his charmingly built church (not that with the china-blue windows), contrived in graceful horseshoe style, with graduated, sloping gallery, richly-stained windows, and a vast array of red-cushioned seats. A black organist was discoursing upon the organ, and a voluminous, dusky charwoman with large arms was cleaning and dusting among the pews below. There sat under Rev. B—— every Sunday a fair share of the quality colored folk of Norfolk. “I am glad that you have come to me, because I can show you an up-to-date and proper church,” said the pastor. “There are nine or ten like this in Norfolk, but when a stranger asks to see a Negro church he’s usually taken to some out-of-the-way tabernacle of the Holy Folks or some queer sect where everyone is shouting Hallelujah, and it all seems very funny. But if you’ll come to me on Sunday morning you’ll hear a service which for dignity and spiritual comeliness will compare with any white man’s service in any part of the world. You mustn’t think of us as still cotton pickers and minstrels and nothing more. There is a great deal of Negro wealth and refinement in this city of Norfolk.” “How do you get on with white ministers?” I asked. “Do you work together?” [38]
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