Charles W. Chesnutt

“ Tryon was quite aware that by a surreptitious
correspondence he ran some risk of compromising
Rena. But he had felt, as soon as he had indulged
his first opportunity to talk of her, an irresistible
impulse to see her and speak to her again.
He could scarcely call at her boarding-place,--
what possible proper excuse could a young white
man have for visiting a colored woman? At the
schoolhouse she would be surrounded by her pupils,
and a private interview would be as difficult, with
more eyes to remark and more tongues to comment
upon it. ”

“ The man
who brought the first negro into the British colonies
had committed a crime against humanity and a
worse crime against his own race. The father of
this girl had been guilty of a sin against society
for which others--for which he, George Tryon--
must pay the penalty. As slaves, negroes were
tolerable. As freemen, they were an excrescence, an
alien element incapable of absorption into the body
politic of white men. ”

“ As a white man, this
might not mean a great deal to you; as a woman,
shut out already by my color from much that
is desirable, my good name remains my most valuable
possession. I beg of you to let me alone. ”