Oscar Micheaux

“ She walked hurriedly on her way to the street, and did not wait or think of the elevator that would have saved her strength. When she was on the street, she hurried through the rain—for it was pouring now—and did not stop until the ferry had been reached.
Once aboard this, she hid herself in the darkest place she could find, and there, as the paddle of the propeller came to her ears, she cried: "Sidney, my Sidney, I have found you. And never, never, until the end of the world will I be far from you—Oh, my love!" ”

“ It was at this juncture in life that a new thought came to Jean Baptiste. In all his life he had been a thinker, a practical thinker—a prolific thinker. Moreover, a great reader into the bargain. So the thought that struck him now, was writing. Perhaps he could write. If so then what would he write? So in the days that followed, gradually a plot formed in his mind, and when he had decided, he chose that he could write his own story—his life of hell, the work of an evil power! ”

“ Not one person in a thousand, would have gone through what she had, but human endurance, wrestling with all life's vicissitudes, has a limit. How much it cost, that one tear, he could not fully estimate; but, if he knew life, if some one didn't come to Mildred Latham's rescue soon, she might become anything. Not far from where she sat, a thousand or more women were burning their souls in hell. And all those women were there—not by preference; but because they were simply human beings and weak.
He approached, and a moment later stood near her, while her finger toyed with the pen. ”

“ As the early morning train carried me down the road from Megory, I hoped with all the hope of early manhood, I would find a sensible girl and not like many I knew in Chicago, who talked nothing but clothes, jewelry, and a good time. I had no doubt there were many good colored girls in the east, who, if they understood my life, ambition and morality, would make a good wife and assist me in building a little empire on the Dakota plains, not only as a profit to ourselves, but a credit to the negro race as well. ”

“ Never in his life had Jean Baptiste the opportunity to be perfectly free. He had once loved dearly, and he had sought to forget the one he had so loved because of the Custom of the Country and its law. Out of his life she had apparently gone, and we know the fate of the other. There is nothing in the world so sweet as to love a woman. But, on the other hand, mayhap all that is considered love is not so; it may be merely passion, and it was passion he discovered that was guiding Irene Grey. ”

“ The Negro now, the picture of which our pen cannot describe, stood over him with razor upraised, and eyes dancing with murder like huge coals of fire. "Don't cut me with that razor, Mister," the victim whimpered. He pushed the other back until he was against the door. For the first time in his life, Sidney Wyeth was to see a man killed. One moment he looked. The sunlight played through a transom window, falling strangely upon the blade of that poised razor. He closed his eyes to shut out the fearful sight. The next moment, he opened them as he heard a noise—a momentous instant. ”

“ I have felt, if a person could only order his mind as he does his limbs and have it respond or submit to the will, how much easier life would be. For it is that relentless thinking all the time until one's mind becomes a slave to its own imaginations, that brings eternal misery, where happiness might be had. ”

“ To have some one—even such a woman look at him so kindly, to say words of condolence was like water to the thirsty. He thought then again of that other, and the father that was hers, who at that moment sat in the company of another man's wife. He recalled that Mrs. Pruitt said that he had been in town for several days and every day since he had been there. Naturally. This man courted another man's wife openly, yet was ready with all the force in him, the moment Jean Baptiste sought his God-given mate, to rise up in pious dignity to oppose him. ”

“ In the lives of all men, the greatest thing is to love. Sidney Wyeth had hoped, at some time, to gain this happiness, the love of a woman. Had he earned it? Apparently not, from another's point of view. That was all so singular, she thought, time and again. For the evil creature, evil genius, was a preacher, a minister of the Gospel. "I can't quite reconcile myself to that part of it, yet I should," she mused, now aloud, "for my father is a preacher."
Mildred Latham's thoughts drifted from Sidney Wyeth for a time, and reverted to her own life, and that of her father, who was a preacher. ”

“ These people had no doubt been honorable and had intended to remain loyal to their race, but long, hard years, lean crops, and the long, lonesome days had changed them. It is easier to control the thoughts than the emotions. The craving for love and understanding pervades the very core of a human, and makes the mind reckless to even such a grave matter as race loyalty. ”

“ Your morals are common knowledge to all the people of Illinois, and elsewhere. And let me tell you, you can—as you have—in your family, force those who know it and condemn it to keep quiet by making yourself so disagreeable that they will honey you up to get along with you. But it is not because they, or all those who know you, are not aware of it! That's your reputation, and some day you are going to suffer for it. You deliberately make people miserable to satisfy your infernal vanity; your desire to be looked upon and called great. ”

“ What a glorious feeling it must be, she felt, to be a pioneer; to blaze the way for others, that human beings ever after, to the end of time, may live and thrive by the right of others' conquest! He had plowed the soil, turned hundreds of acres of that wild land into a state of plant productivity, which should bear fruit for posterity. And if Sidney Wyeth had in the end failed, in a way it was only after he had done a man's part in behalf of others. ”

“ By reading nothing but discussions concerning the race, by all but refusing to accept the success of the white race as an example and by welcoming any racial disturbance as a conclusion that the entire white race is bent in one great effort to hold him—the negro, down, he can not very well feel the thrill of modern progress and is ignorant as to public opinion. ”

“ Jean Baptiste pulled his new binder before the barn, jumped from the seat, and before he started to unhitch, he gazed out over a stretch of land which two years before, had been a mass of unbroken prairie, but was now a world of shocked grain. Thousands upon thousands of shocks stood over the field like a great army in the distance. His crop was good—the best. And no crops are like the crop on new land. ”

“ The night was cold, and dark and dreary; but to Sidney Wyeth it was hot—suffocating in those next moments. His jaw dropped as he started to speak, but the words failed to come. After a time, the elements began to clear, but left him weak. He turned with a savage gripping at his heart, and stumbled back in the direction from whence he had come.
"Oh, Mildred!" he wailed. "Mildred, Mildred! I can't believe it.... I can never, oh, never——and I loved you so!" On and on he went; at times walking, other times stumbling; but always uttering incoherent sentences. "It can't be true—it isn't true! ”

“ So time had gone on as time will; never stopping for anything, never hesitating, never delaying. So the day went, and the week and the month, and the month after that and the month after that, until in time the holidays were near, and Jean Baptiste was going away, away to forget that which was more to him than all the world—the love of Agnes Stewart. ”

“ Five saloons were crowded to overflowing, and a score of bartenders served thousands of thirsty throats; while on the side opposite from the bar, and in the rear, gambling was in full blast. Professionals, "tin horns", and "pikers", in their shirt sleeves worked away feverishly drawing in and paying money to the crowd that surged around the Roulette, the Chuck-luck, and the Faro-bank. It seemed as though everybody drank and gambled. "This is Megory's Day", they called between drinks, and it would echo with "have another," "watch Megory grow." ”

“ In that moment he wanted to be back there. He felt guilty. He turned and beheld Miss Palmer. He felt more guilty than before. She lay against the tree with her face turned the other way. He felt very sorry for her then. Yes, Miss Palmer would, he believed, do the right thing. She would be glad to do the right thing. Oh, she had had her troubles. And Sidney Wyeth knew that when people had suffered, especially when it had been their great ambition to do the right thing and be happy, they would go through eternity to make happiness possible. ”

“ In short the Keystone was the meeting place for men in nearly all the walks of life.
Always the freest city in the world for the black man, Chicago has the most Negroes in the mail service and the civil service; more Negroes carry clubs as policemen; more can be found in all the departments of the municipal courts, county commissioners, aldermen, corporation counsels, game warden assistants, and so on down. Indeed, a Negro feels freer and more hopeful in Chicago than anywhere else in the United States.
So it was such a crowd that Jean Baptiste encountered at the Keystone that day. ”

“ Plum Street, besides being the leading business thoroughfare, is likewise the most imposing resident district, at its extreme end. Large cars, modern and built of steel, thread their way, not only to the city limits, but they penetrate far into the country beyond.
And it was aboard one of these modern conveyances that Sidney Wyeth reclined, observing the size and grandeur of the many magnificent residences, that stood back from either side of the street in sumptuous splendor. ”

“ You will do her a favor by going to your room until it is over," advised their mother.
"Oh, well, if I'm not wanted, then I'll go," spit out Ethel wickedly, whereupon she turned and hastened up the stairs to her room and slammed the door behind her.
"Ethel has such a temper," her mother sighed deploringly. "She is so different from you, dear. You are like your mother, while she—well, she has her father's ways."
"Papa is not as mean as Ethel," defended Orlean, ever obedient to her mother, yet always upholding her father, it mattered not what the issue. ”

“ But Wilson Jacobs did. He had made it a part of his young life to think deeply, and in the interest of those who needed him.
And now they needed him. Oh, how much they needed him, and how much strength he needed to raise twenty-seven thousand dollars before midnight of December thirty-first!
"Black people do appreciate that which is for their good; but, be merciful, dear God, they know it not. But they will, and when they do come to know it, how much life, how much feeling and enthusiasm they will exert! And may we not say the same of all of us!" ”

“ While Jean Baptiste was conscious that a burden had been lifted from his mind, and Glavis and her father chatted freely, she sat silently by without even a clear thought. She was only conscious that she had lied, that after a life of weakness, a life that had made no one happy or cheerful or gay, she had for the first time in her life, deliberately lied. And as she became more conscious of what had passed, she felt a burden upon her. Never since the day she had abused her husband ”

“ She felt all she had heard a moment before now running through her mind, and yet she did not speak. Miss Jones was speaking again:
"We are both in the same boat; one's as bad as the other. No questions asked...."
"Oh, Miss Jones," Mildred heard again, but her lips still were not moved. "How can you, oh, how can you!" Why didn't she do something? She heard herself, but words were not spoken: "Why do you stand, Mildred Latham? Why do you not go—hurry? You have stood too long now. Hurry, hurry! To Mother Jane's—to Jacobs! Yes, to anywhere; but go, go, go!" ”

“ Have you never seen a woman who never changed her mind—especially when there was a man in the case?"
"Of course I have," she shouted. "I am one who has never changed their mind!"
"I agree, and that is what's the matter with you," so saying, he made his get-away to avoid what would have followed.
"Now, you will have to deal with my husband in regard to this matter, Mr. Baptiste," admonished Mother Mary. She had given into him along with Orlean. It was useless to try to pit their weak wits against the commanding and domineering reason, the quick logic and searching intuition of Jean Baptiste. ”

“ Thus was the condition of crime in Effingham. It was a rare Sunday that didn't have five or six shootings, killings and cutting affrays. The record for the previous year showed more than three hundred murders, mostly by Negroes upon each other, and in part by the police. Eighty per cent of all murder in the city was among two-fifths of the whole, or the Negro population. But what surprised Wyeth was, that insofar as speaking of it as an everyday occurrence, and something to be expected, the colored people paid little attention to it. ”

“ If Orlean was a woman she would be right out there with you now where she belongs!"
"And I agree with you again, Glavis. But Orlean isn't a woman, and that is what I have been trying to make her. She has never been a woman—wasn't reared so to be. By nature she is like her mother, and she has grown up according to her training." ”

“ One day, when arguments were abundant, it came to a point where Wyeth made mention of the fact that so few teachers showed any interest in current events; did not read the magazines, and Negro literature they almost held in contempt.
"Is it because they feel that no Negro knows enough to write anything they would care to read?"
"The idea," cried Miss Palmer, indignant. "All the teachers take the magazines, and as for Negro literature, it has been the teachers who have robbed themselves to make the same possible." ”

“ He could see that they were tender eyes; eyes behind which there was not apparently the force of will that he desired; but Orlean McCarthy was a fine girl. She was fine because she was not wicked; because she was intelligent and had been carefully reared; she was fine because she had never cultivated the society of undesirable or common people; but she was not a fine girl because she had a great mind, or great ability; or because she had done anything illustrious. And this Jean Baptiste, a judge of human nature could readily see; but he would marry her, he would be good to her ”

“ Not one in five knows how to arrange a loan. They permit themselves to be governed by some dealer, who, in almost every instant, is the worst grafter possible. They will make a loan with a life of three years, at eight per cent interest, and five per cent commission. Now you know that no loan running three years, on property that poor people are trying to buy on the installment plan, is practical. Yet that is the kind of loan that most of these cheap sharks offer to the masses of our people, who have no judgment. A Negro is unable, as a rule, to realize that three years is a very short time. ”

“ So the best way, as I can see, is for you to meet Orlean somewhere, and there reason it out with her." She paused briefly then, and was thoughtful.
"She loves you as her mother loves, in a simple, weak way; but what is a love like that worth! In truth, while I admire your courage, and desire to uphold the sacredness of the marriage vow, you ought to get a divorce and marry a girl with some will and force."
"I realize so, Mrs. Pruitt, but I am determined to live with Orlean and protect her if it is within my power." ”

“ Her make-up was in keeping with the position she held as matron at one of the local Negro colleges. When she spoke, her voice struck the ear musically. She was a widow.
"Why have you never remarried, Mrs. Lautier?" Wyeth ventured, one day. She colored unseen for a moment, before she answered:
"Perhaps there's a reason."
"What reason? You are charming—very charming, I think," said he earnestly, although he smiled.
She hid her face. For a woman of her age, she was most extraordinary. "I have been told that creole people have a most frightful temper," pursued Wyeth, enjoying her manner. ”