Bootblack

“ From this dead level they have striven long to rise. In this striving they have made many mistakes, have had some failures and some successes. They voluntarily withdrew from bootblacking, barbering, table waiting, and menial service whenever they saw a chance to climb higher, and their places were quickly filled by foreign whites. ”

“ He comes home to be a loafer, or a boot-black, or a buggy boy, or a cook, or a waiter, or a barber, or a prisoner. He comes home to despair, to temptation, to ruin. And this sad state of things can never change by accident: if a better condition of things shall ever be our lot, it must come about as the result of forces which the Negro himself shall put in operation. Our white neighbor looks upon the facts that we earn the millions and can’t control the cents, as proof that we are an inferior race. ”

“ The Egyptian boot-blacks have a regular constitution and set of laws; not written out or printed, but not the less enforced.
1. The city of Cairo is divided into about a dozen boot-black districts.
2. The strongest boot-black in his district shall be the Sheik, or chief, until some stronger boy whips him; then the strongest boy takes his place.
[Pg 298]
3. Every boot-black must obey his Sheik.
4. Always stand by a boot-black, even if from another district.
5. Only Mohammedans are allowed the privilege of being boot-blacks. Any other sects taking up the trade must be put down. ”

“ All day long these little roguish-eyed rascals wander round the plaza carrying their boot boxes and begging you to let them kneel in front of you and make your boots like looking-glasses. The boys are all so pretty and have got such winning smiles that you are insanely inclined to have your boots blacked every quarter of an hour. Joking apart, boot-blacking has been reduced to a science in Merida, and the operators put out of joint the noses of the London Boot Brigade. ”

“ A true Mohammedan looks on blackened boots as on something sacrilegious, so that we boot-blacks are regarded with scorn by our pious neighbors. The boot-black trade is in the European part of the city; that is where we mostly get our customers. We charge no regular price, but take just what we can get. Our worst customers are the military officers and policemen, for they often fail to pay us a single para ”

“ Whenever you see a well-blacked boot in the street, in the counting-house, or in the sanctity of home, fix your eyes upon it. Thus you will learn, and may in time black boots as well as I do myself.
(N.B.—George writes the most extronery fine English, I'm told, and o' course 'e wants the young 'uns to do the same. Same with me and the boots.—B. the B.)
My first answer is from James Huggins, who as is well-known, polishes the foot-coverings of the innumerable visitors who throng to the Transcontinental Hotel. He says, "you ask me how I acquired my unquestioned ability as a blacker. ”

“ Blacking boots is a profession in America—in many hotels a special charge is made for it, or else the visitors are left to their own devices thereon—and boot-blacks have shops and nooks fitted with high, huge easy chairs, elevated like thrones, where their clients can comfortably repose during the operation of polish. ”

“ Major Booth, who was killed near the close of the fight, conducted the defence with great coolness, skill, and gallantry. His last signal to the boat was, “We are hard pressed and shall be overpowered.” He refused to surrender, however, and fought to the last. By the uniform and voluntary, testimony of the rebel officers, as well as the survivors of the fight, the negro-artillery regiments fought with the bravery and coolness of veterans, and served the guns with skill and precision. ”

“ Breathless, I sat down on a door-step to contemplate my next undertaking, whereupon four professional boot-blacks roughly accosted me, asking how long I had been a boot-black, and to what district I belonged. I replied that I did not belong to any; upon which they began roughly pushing me, and wanted to take away my brushes and blacking; but I fought manfully and desperately for them.
"Hafarêm" (i. e., well done) , said one. "You are a ghadah" (i. e., fine fellow) . "You can fight well; and as you have no one, we will take you in our company, provided you divide your earnings with us." ”

“ Not only this, but even those with light or red whiskers run to the dye-kettle, steal a color which nature has refused them, and, an hour after, curse the negro for a complexion that is not stolen. If black is so hateful, why do not gentlemen have their boots whitewashed? If the slaves of the South had been white, the same prejudice would have existed against them. Look at the “poor white trash,” as the lower class of whites in the Southern States are termed. ”

“ Then, out of the hurly-burly of panting torsos and whirling limbs, there seemed to pop one black figure, in startling contrast with the lighter-hued athletes about him. My eyes focused on the stranger and stayed focused.
He was the blackest thing I ever saw in my life—blacker than a crow at mid night, blacker than the interior of a whale, blacker than the cellar of the Mammoth Cave, blacker than black velvet. ”

“ My room-mate and I had from our small earnings bought some black cotton, at a tripled price, as all the black material in the city was not sufficient to meet the demand, and as we tacked it about our one window, a man, passing, told us the assassin had been discovered, and that he was the actor Booth. ”

“ Necessity is probably the mother of invention, as Lord Avebury has pointedly remarked, and the introduction of the brown boot is due, according to a well-known Bond Street maker, to the exigencies of a retired General, who, finding it difficult to get his boots adequately blacked at his chambers, suggested, as a solution of his embarrassment, that it might be possible to devise a form of boot in which blacking could be entirely dispensed with. ”

“ Again, why do we black and polish our boots? The key is found in the French cirage, or blacking. We black our boots because brown leather would, with wet and use, naturally get discolored with dark patches, and thus boots to look well should be colored black. ”

“ Just as I have heard and seen in the barracones of Bozal negroes for sale, when, at the crack of the black negro-driver's whip, and not unfrequent application of the lash, the flagging gang of exhausted slavery has ever and again set up that chant of revelry, run mad, and danced that dance of desperation, which was to persuade the atrocious dealers in human flesh how sound of wind and limb they were, and the bystanders how happy. ”

“ One young negro who came to be photographed expressly stipulated that he should not be made to look black. To obviate this difficulty, the photographer wets his customer's face with water, so as to present a shiny appearance to the lens of the camera, and a brighter result is thus secured. On this particular occasion the ingenious dodge failed, and the vain young negro loudly denounced it as representing him a great deal blacker than he was in the flesh. Indeed, the tears sparkled in his eyes as he protested that he was "no black nigger." ”

“ Occasionally you see boot-blacks with kits similar to their cousins in more civilized countries, and the two who used to hang around my hotel in Cairo always ready for “backsheesh” whether they gave my boots a “shine” or not, were the most unprepossessing little gamins I ever met.
One fellow used to annoy two of us greatly with propositions to enter our employ; and half a dozen times every day he used to pester us with proposals, and we endeavored to hire him to let us alone but all to no purpose. ”

“ It took our Texan many months to pick it up, even in this mutilated condition. But after all, Jeffs character and capacity come out most in the direction of boots. It. is from his attitude with regard to them that I incline to think that the Black race have a great future in these States. You may have gathered from previous letters that there is a clear, though not a well marked, division in this settlement as to blacking. Amos Hill builds on it decidedly, and would have every farmer appear in blacked boots, at any rate on Sunday. ”

“ It was only then I recalled having noticed that he had not changed to his varnished boots, having still on his feet the doggish and battered pair he most favoured. It was a trick of his to evade me with them. I did for them each day all that human boot-cream could do, but they were things no sensitive gentleman would endure with evening dress. ”

“ The thought of the multitudes so much worse off than himself in this matter of foot-wear, gives him no sort of satisfaction. Their boots pinch him vicariously. The black rage with the scheme of things that once he felt through suffering in his own person in the days when he limped shabbily through gaily busy, fashionable London streets, in split boots that chafed, he feels now just as badly as he goes about the world very comfortably himself, but among people whom he knows with a pitiless clearness to be almost intolerably uncomfortable. ”

“ They were threading their way among the huts when, from one of them there emerged suddenly a man—a black man—but not blacker than his coat, nor very much blacker than his dingy tie that had once been white. ”

“ At a distance the black and white man exactly resembled each other, but on approaching closer it could be seen that the black man held the face of an incredibly stolid ruffian, while the white man’s face was engraved with the patience of a cowed child. Not being acquainted with psychoanalysis—that blind exaggeration of sexual routines—Carl did not believe, after he returned to the touch of the park bench, that this picture had slyly veiled the direction of his physical desires. ”

“ There was no great spoil to be got, for they were all stark naked as they came into the world, men and women together, some of them having feathers stuck in their hair, and others a kind of bracelet about their necks, but nothing else; but our negroes got a booty here, which we were very glad of, and this was the bows and arrows of the vanquished, of which they found more than they knew what to do with, belonging to the killed and wounded men ”

“ This contempt of the black is felt by nearly every coloured girl, and is bitterly resented. I have seen young mulatto women refusing to dance with blacks at a ball, and the latter, in fury, threatening to call out the father or brother of the offending beauty. Yet what can be more absurd than such a pretension or prejudice, when, but two generations removed, their mothers were African slaves! ”

“ Blacks had disappeared from the streets except in their own belt, around which howled and stormed the white mob. This was no case of punishing the blacks who precipitated the first attack on the beach, but of punishing all blacks. The cry was not “Get the nigger!” but “Get the niggers!” Difference of color, blackness, was the sole object of the crowd’s fury.
On their side, the blacks fought against whiteness. They had begun by stoning, not the white man who had thrown the first stone, but all the whites upon whom they could lay their black hands. ”

“ But that would avail little to the negroes, who would lose the confidence they are beginning to feel in white men. Yet there was but one thing for us to do, and it was with heavy, aching hearts that at midnight we separated. Companies of soldiers were to be sent from Beaufort in the night and distributed to the different plantations to prevent the negroes from taking to the woods, so that we were not surprised at being roused about two hours after by thundering knocks at the front door, echoing through all these empty rooms with a ghostly sound. ”

“ To the latter—the man who knows the Negro more remotely—the miracle is explained only upon the assumption that the Negro is a Caucasian in black and not what God made him—a Negro—with his own racial characteristics, able to absorb what is best in the world, to build it unto himself and to stand before his Master and before mankind in God and self-fashioned black manhood. ”

“ Negro characters range from Dr. Miller, a skillful physician, to the militant Josh Green; the loyal Sandy, and Jerry, a “white man’s nigger.” Sandy is framed for a murder in the first part of the book. A bloody riot, based on the one at Wilmington, N. C., is described in the second part. The white demagogues whip up the mob to fury, because a Negro newspaper has denounced lynching. Josh Green, who is willing to die rather than be shot down like a dog, who puts aside “fergetfulness and fergiveness,” leads the aroused Negroes, when the upper-class Negroes believe that nothing can be done. ”

“ The discontented and oppressed negroes, increasing in numbers and wealth, would have demanded their rights ultimately, even by the threat of force, or by the use of force they would have secured their rights. In the North there would have been a large body of the people, only less than the whole body, who would have sympathized with the negroes and who, in an exigency would have rendered them material aid. ”

“ This was his shroud; too like a soldier's. Harold, meantime, had been tied to a tree, but was now released for the march. Colonel Conger pushed on immediately for Washington; the cortege was to follow. Booth's only arms were his carbine knife, and two revolvers. They found about him bills of exchange, Canada money, and a diary. A venerable old negro living in the vicinity had the misfortune to possess a horse. This horse was a relic of former generations, and showed by his protruding ribs the general leanness of the land. ”

“ The old negro geared up his wagon by means of a set of fossil harness, and when it was backed to Garrett's porch, they laid within it the discolored corpse. The corpse was tied with ropes around the legs and made fast to the wagon sides. Harold's legs were tied to stirrups, and he was placed in the centre of four murderous looking cavalrymen. The two sons of Garrett were also taken along, despite the sobs and petitions of the old folks and women, but the rebel captain who had given Booth a lift, got off amidst the night's agitations, and was not rearrested. ”