George Allan England

“ XII In a blind alley leading out of Hammond Street, Roxbury—which section shelters most of Boston's negro population of close to twenty thousand—some dozen or fifteen dusky folk, that night, were gathered together in a house that reeked of fetid air, gaslight, sweat, tobacco smoke, and the peculiar aroma of the African. ”

“ Murmurs ran through the tense group. Gaslight flicked oily or bronzed gleams from black and “high yaller” skins, from shining eyeballs, from teeth parted in nervous laughter. A fat woman murmured words of prayer. ”

“ Andrew Todd was affirming. “I drove old man Lockwood an' that there perfessor all the way to Charleston, South Ca'lina, and I knows what I knows!”
“An' what do you know?” demanded a greasy mulatto buck, sitting fatly with his hands on his hips, and a cigar gripped in his projecting teeth. “Some folks knows a whole lot as ain't so!” ”