Speeches & Writings File [A Colored Woman in a White
World (17)]

51
the chance. Such luck we had never dreamed would befall us. It was a glorious
afternoon in August when we started, and no two young people in the
world were happier than ourselves. But after we had gone quite a distance, 
clouds began to appear in the sky and before the boat could reach the shore
a terrific storm broke. I had no idea what it meant to be in a sail boat,
until I saw the difficulty experienced by the men who were trying to get it
to the shore. 
     Terror-stricken I had to move first from one side to the other, 
while the men shifted the position of the sails and the rudder. Over and
over again they failed to direct the boat properly, so that it could go
towards the shore, headed in the right direction. Sometimes when I was sure
they had succeeded and hoped we would soon land, I would hear one of the 
men say, "No, that won't do, we've got to tack some more." Then they would
have to go in the opposite direction again. And so they see-sawed back and
forth for what seemed to me to be an eternity. That taught me a lesson
about sailboats and I have never been in one from that day to this. 
     I have always enjoyed seeing a storm on water, but once while I 
was camping on Lake Erie I allowed my enthusiasm for this manifestation of
nature to carry me too far. I thought it would be great sport to go into the
lake, while the storm was raging. So in I plunged and was having a delightful
time jumping up and down as the big waves rolled in to the shore. But,
suddenly, when I tried to touch the ground after I had jumped on a high
billow, I found there was nothing under my feet but water. I realized that 
if I kept that up very long that I would be washed out into the lake and
would drown. There was nobody near me who could swim, as I was the only person
in the lake at that place. Even if anybody who could swim had been near
me, he, would have had difficulty in bringing me through the high, rough
waves, as they rushed angrily and heavily toward the shore. 
     I do not know how I saved myself, I can simply remember that whenever
I saw a wave coming in I jumped as high as I could and kept thinking
that I would surely drown if I allowed myself to fall into a panic. Finally, 
I felt my feet touch land. So great had been the exertion I barely had the
strength to wade out of the water. Never after that was I tempted to risk
my life for the sake of a thrill. 

52
Chapter 7
I Go to Memphis, Tenn.
     Just before I graduated from Oberlin my father wrote me he would
meet me in Louisville, Kentucky, with two of my friends, after Commencement,
that we would have a nice little visit there and then go to Memphis where
I was to live with him. When I reached Louisville, my father took my trunk
check and gave it to the driver of the "hack", that ancient of days, which
has gone the "way of all flesh", and told him to get my trunk. The driver
soon returned with a little black wooden box, which looked like a coffin
for a cat or a dog, and was about to place it under the front seat, when I
spied it and asked him why he did not get my trunk. "This little box is 
what your check called for," he replied. So there I was in a strange city,
knowing that I would be receiving invitations to all sorts of functions
and there were the pretty dresses Mother had sent me before Commencement
locked in a trunk that was nobody knew where. The baggage man had evidently
mixed the checks up when I had left Oberlin for Louisville, and I was 
the unfortunate victim of the mistake.
     Fine dresses did not occupy as much of a girl's thoughts then as
they do now, so I swallowed my disappointment quite philosophically. Perhaps
the reason I thought so little about clothes was because my mother always
saw to it that I was well provided with suitable, stylish dresses, coats, hats
and shoes, all of which she selected with great care. I do not see how any
normal girl could have thought less about clothes than I did throughout my 
college course, although people said that I dressed very well. 
     Of course it was very annoying not to have the right kind of apparel
when I appeared at the functions to which I was invited in Louisville,
but I simply explained the reason to my hostess and a few friends and made
up my mind to have a good time. It would be much easier for me to extricate
myself from such a dilemma today, because if I had the money I could buy one
or two ready-made dresses which would answer the purpose quite well. But
ready-made dresses were not so plentiful then as they are now, and I probably
would not have thought of resorting to such an expedient, if they had been. 
The day before my visit ended my trunk came, after it had been lost ten days,
and I had a chance to wear one of my pretty dresses.
     Three times in my life my trunk has been lost. Once when I was
travelling in the South it was gone for a month before it was recovered.
My anxiety on that occasion was very great. I was living in Washington at
the time and a President of the United States was about to be inaugurated.

53
The only clothes that I possessed which were suitable to wear to the various
functions which were to be given for the visitors during that festive
week were packed in that trunk which did not arrive till March 2nd, two days
before the Inauguration. "You're very lucky indeed," said the baggage
man, when I went to get it, "If it had not reached here till tomorrow, when
the thousands of pieces of baggage belonging to visitors come rolling in, the
Lord knows when we could have gotten it for you."
When I reached Memphis I saw the beautiful Queen Anne home which
my father had just completed and furnished. He had sent me some blue prints
of the house which he said he was building for me, the winter before I graduated,
so that I might see the plan. But a blue print meant almost nothing
to me then and means no more now. It has always been impossible for me to
visualize the completed structure merely by seeing a blue print. My mental
apparatus is simply not built that way.
My new house seemed very wonderful and imposing to me, when I beheld
it for the first time on a glorious fall day. A delicious dinner had 
been prepared for our party. Nobody in the world knew how to order a good
dinner and nobody enjoyed ordering a good dinner more than Father. He was the
very soul, the very essence of hospitality. He did not like to accept invitations
to dine out himself, and it was almost impossible to induce him to do
so, but he loved to have his friends break bread with him in his own home.
Everything went as merry as a marriage bell. And, indeed, a marriage bell was
just about to ring.
The following January my father married Miss. Anna Wright, one of the 
friends he brought from Memphis to meet me in Louisville. She had been a
school teacher in Memphis for many years, performed brilliantly on the piano, 
was one of the most popular young women in the city, and was generally beloved.
Her mother and my mother had been intimate friends from my earliest
recollection. One summer when I was home on a vacation "Miss. Anna," as I
called her, was engaged by my mother to give me music lessons which I enjoyed
very much. I was well aquainted with her, therefore, and was very fond of
her indeed. 
When my father told me that he was going to get married, named the
bride-to-be and asked me what I thought of it, I told him that if he had
scraped the country with a finetooth comb [deleted text] he could not have found anyone
who would have pleased me better. Since my own mother and father had been 
separated for years and there was no likelihood of their ever being reunited, 

54
I saw no reason in the world why my father should not marry again if he
wished. One day, Anna herself told me that Father wished to marry her and
asked me what I thought of it. I assured her that I had no objection whatever.
After being intimately associated for many years with my father's 
second wife, who died several years ago, I feel that I would not change in
the slightest way the opinion expressed to him about his fiancee, when he
told me for the first time that he intended to make her his wife. In temperament
and disposition my stepmother and I were entirely different, and yet
we never had the slightest misunderstanding with each other and never had
a "falling out" during the whole period she was a member of the family.
I was greatly surprised to see how my relations with my father's
second wife, such pleasant relations, affected some of my acquaintances.
They seemed to feel that I should be antagonistic to her and resent her
marriage to my father from the very nature of the case. The old saws about
stepmothers and mothers-in-law have sunk deep into the consciousness of
people on general principles. Many believe they state facts and do not regard
the gibes as jokes. 
If my own mother had been provoked or pained at my father's second
marriage, perhaps I also might have been annoyed or aggrieved. But she had
known Anna for many years and always liked her, so she, too, felt my father
had made a very wise selection indeed. 
On one occasion she certainly proved she meant what she said, for,
when my father, his wife and two children, were visiting in New York, where
Mother lived at that time, she entertained them in her home. After she left
New York and came to Washington to live with me, Father and his family often 
visited me and on such occasions the relations existing between all of us
were very cordial indeed. 
A few days after he married, Father came into my room and showed
me his will in which he had originally bequeathed all his property to my
brother and myself. He then tore it up, saying as he did so, "You know I'll
have to change all that now." Even then I did not feel the slightest resentment
either toward him or his wife. I felt that he had made his money at
the cost of much energy and many sacrifices and that he had a perfect right
to dispose of it as he pleased. But, the trouble is, many people feel that in
considering certain situations they are expected to entertain stereotyped
opinions prescribed by custom and tradition, whether a particular case warrants

55
any deviation from that point of view or not. 
During the year I spent in Memphis after my father's marriage I made
up my mind definitely that, since he no longer needed me, it was wrong for me
to remain idle there. I could not be happy leading a purposeless existence. 
Situated as I was I could not put the college education I had taken such
pains to acquire to any good use. I could not actively engage in any kind
of work outside of the home, because my father did not approve of my doing
so. He would not consent to my teaching in the public schools of Memphis,
because he said "I would be taking the bread and butter out of the  mouth
of some girl who needed it." Since he was able and willing to support me,
he declared, he did not understand why I wanted to teach or do any kind of
work.
Naturally, my father was the product of his environment. In the South
for nearly three hundred years, "real ladies" did not work, and my father was
thoroughly imbued with that idea. He wanted his daughter to be a "lady."
But said daughter had been reared among "Yankees" and she had imbibed the
"Yankee's" respect for work. I had conscientiously availed myself of opportunities
for preparing myself for a life of usefulness, as only four other
colored women had been able to do. In the class of 1884 at Oberlin College
an extraordinary thing had occurred. Three colored women received the degree
of A.B. at that Commencement. Previous to that only two colored
women had received that degree from any college in the United States or anywhere
else in the world, so far as available records show. 
All during my college course I had dreamed of the day when I could
become a real power for good. The more I realized how wonderful and rare
had been the opportunities I had enjoyed, the more deeply impressed was I
with the fact that it was my bounden duty to use for the public good whatever
mental and spiritual force I had acquired. Therefore, after graduating
from Oberlin I grew more and more restless and dissatisfied with the life
I was leading in Memphis, as the year I remained there rolled by. And so,
although the relations between my stepmother and myself were most cordial, 
I decided that life would be much pleasanter for everybody concerned, my own
mother included, in spite of her philosophical attitude toward my father's 
marriage, if I left Memphis, engaged in some kind of work and struck out for
myself. 
The summer following my father's marriage, I went to New York to

56
visit my mother. After writing to several schools for colored youth I secured 
a position in Wilberforce University. Several desirable positions
were offered to me as the result of that correspondence. The heads of the
institutions for colored youth were beginning to insist that the teachers
employed should be college graduates and there were so few colored women
then who met this requirement, it was [deleted text] easy for those who did to secure
desirable positions.
Wilberforce University is situated about three miles from Xenia, 
Ohio. This was one of the reasons why I decided to go there rather than to
another school. I knew my father would be less opposed to my teaching in
the North than in the South, and I wanted to placate him as much as possible. 
Years afterward I learned that the president of one of the southern schools 
who had offered me a position actually waited a week for me at the beginning
of the year. But I had not received the letter notifying me of my appointment. 
The president of this school was a Scotchman and he was eagar
to place a well-prepared colored woman on his faculty, each of whom was
white.
At Wilberforce I received the munificent sum of $40 per month, out
of which I was obliged to pay my board, although my room was furnished me
free of charge. I taught everything from French and Mineralogy in the
college department to reading and writing in the preparatory department. 
In the Senior class which I taught, each of the students was older than myself. 
In Oberlin I had had only one one year in French, but at Wilberforce I was
required to teach a class, each of whom had had two years of the language. 
To make a bad matter worse, two of the students came from Haiti and their
mother tongue was French. But literally did I burn the midnight oil, so as
to keep ahead of my pupils, each of whom had had a year more French than
their teacher. How I cudgeled my brain, strained my eyes and burdened my
memory trying to learn the stones in Mineralogy!
In addition to teaching five classes in subjects totally dissimilar, 
I was secretary of the Faculty, and had to write the minutes in long
hand, no matter how voluminous they were or how busy with my classes I was. 
Every now and then students who had been charged with various 
misdemeanors were brought before the Faculty to be questioned. On one occasion
several students were accused of throwing a bucket of water on the
President of the University, so, one after another came before the Faculty
to tell what he knew, but mostly that he didn't know. Taking this voluminous

57
testimony in long hand was a task which I should never have the courage to
attempt again. It covered reams of paper and finally had to be transcribed
in the secretary's book.
My position in this case was a bit uncomfortable and unfortunate,
because, in walking from the recitation building to my boarding place, one
day, in a burst of confidence a student told me who threw the water on the
President, having pledged me to eternal secrecy, before I had the remotest
idea what he was going to divulge. So, as secretary of the Faculty, there
I sat through long hours of the night listening to all manner of fairy
tales about that bucket of water which I knew were not true. Never after
that did I allow a student to tell me any secrets about their pranks. I
stopped them just as soon as they started to unburden their souls.
In addition to teaching five classes and being secretary to
the Faculty I played the organ for the church services every Sunday morning
and evening and gave a night every week for choir rehearsal. Long before
Commencement I had to accompany the chorus several nights each week,
while it was either learning new selections or rehearsing old ones for that
gala occasion. And Commencements at Wilberforce in those days were really
red-letter days for us all. The trustees of the University came, not only
to attend the exercises but to discuss ways and means of managing and
financing the institution, and they sometimes argued pro and con with such
vigor that their voices could not be heard in hot debate a long distance from
the conference room.
Certainly nobody could truthfully claim that I had many idle
moments, when I taught at Wilberforce University. If any teacher ever earned
her salary, I certainly earned mine. But I enjoyed every second of my work 
while I remained there, and moreover, at the end of the year I had actually
saved $150. I felt richer the day I counted my money and found that I had
that large amount than I have ever felt since. I am sure that if I should
discover that by some "hook or crook" I had come into the possession of a
million dollars today, I could not feel richer or happier than I did at
Wilberforce with that fabulously large sum which I had saved out of my
salary that first year.
The school is beautifully situated in an entrancing rural spot
and everything in the community centers around the institution which is a
world in itself.
During the first year I taught at Wilberforce, I heard from

58
my father only once. He was so angry at me for accepting a position to
teach, he would not write to me. I had often discussed the subject with
him and knew he was unalterably opposed to my teaching anywhere. For that
reason I did not tell him I was going to teach in Wilberforce University
after I left my mother in New York. I had definitely made up my mind I
would not spend another year in idleness, and I thought it was better to
teach without asking his permission than to ask it and then accept a 
position, after he had forbidden me to do so. I hoped that when he learned
that I was working in the North instead of the South, he would be reconciled
to it. But my hopes in that respect were blasted.
For a few seconds after I read Father's letter replying to mine
in which I told him I had gone to Wilberforce University to teach I was
literally stunned with grief. He upbraided me bitterly. He reprimanded
me severely for disregarding his wishes and disobeying his commands. His
reproaches stung me to the quick. To be sure my conscience was clear and
I knew I had done right to use my training to promote the welfare of my
race. Nevertheless, it pained me deeply to displease my father and for a
long time I was very unhappy indeed. But I wrote to him occasionally
throughout the school year and did everything in my power to appease his
wrath.
At Christmas I sent presents to him, to his wife and to a little
baby brother who had arrived in October. But nothing came to me from my
father.
As soon as school closed I went to New York to spend the first
half of my vacation with Mother and then I decided to go to Memphis to
see Father, so as to patch up our differences if I possibly could. En route
I sent him a telegram stating that I would arrive at five o'clock the next
morning, and when the train pulled into the station, there on the platform
waiting to greet me was my dearly-beloved father, who literally received me
with open arms. So ended the most serious breach between my father and myself
which ever occurred.
Deep down in his heart he was proud of me, because he knew I had
done what I believed to be my duty. And he could not help realizing that
in taking that stand I was simply proving that I was"a chip of the old
block." As some girls run away from home to marry the man of their choice
and thus brook their father's displeasure, so I left home and ran the risk
of permanently alienating my father from myself, to engage in the work which

59
his money had prepared me to do. After that my father never objected to
my teaching and at the end of that summer vacation he was perfectly willing
for me to return to Wilberforce to resume my work.
At the close of my second year in Wilberforce a very delightful
and very wealthy woman came to visit the school, liked me and invited me
most cordially to go abroad with her the next summer. I had long wanted
to study abroad and hailed this opportunity with delight. My father cheerfully
consented to let me go and promised to let me have all the money I
needed for the trip. So far did my wealthy friend and I go with the preparations
for this voyage that she selected our cabins and talked enthusiastically
about the color of some dresses which she thought would be becoming
to me and which she wanted me to wear. She waxed especially eloquent
when she described the colors she wished me to affect when we reached
Egypt. Women of my complexion look very well in pink, she said, so I was
to have at least one dress of that color.
Then, like a thunderclap out of a clear sky, came suddenly an invitation
for me to teach in the colored High School in Washington, D.C. Dr.
John R. Francis, one of the colored members of the Board of Education, had
written to the secretaries of several colleges, requesting them to send
the names of recent colored graduates with their records and their addresses,
so that he might write them concerning positions in the colored High
School.
Mrs.A.A.F.Johnston, the dean of women in Oberlin, wrote so enthusiastically 
about the three colored women who had graduated in the class
of 1884 that Dr. Francis sent for one of them and myself to come immediately.
The third member of the class came several years later to teach.
I regret exceedingly that I have lost two letters of recommendation
written by Oberlin professors in my behalf. One was sent by my Greek
teacher, Professor Frost, and the other was written by Mrs. Jonston herself.
They attributed to me qualities of head and heart which I wish I could believe
I possess and they placed an estimate upon my record as a student of
which any one might be proud.
I wanted very much to go abroad with the wealthy woman, because I
knew that conditions under which I would travel with her as chaperone would
be so extraordinary that it would be practically impossible to duplicate
them with anybody else whom I might meet. But my father promised if I waited
till the following summer, he would go abroad with me himself. That


60
prospect was very alluring indeed. But I was tormented by the fear that
if I postponed the trip, something might happen to prevent me from taking
it at all. "After altering your plans," a little voice kept whispering in
my ear, "what if your father changes his mind and decides not to go abroad
next year? If he does, you may have to wait a long time before you get another
chance. And perhaps you may never be able to realize your dream of
years."
I knew Father would not let me go abroad alone, even if I myself
had sufficient courage to undertake it. I could scarcely sleep for revolving
this momentous question in my mind. Never after that in my whole life
was it more difficult for me to decide what it was best to do, than when I
was trying to make up my mind whether I should go abroad, as I had so nicely
planned, or postpone the trip a year and accept a position to teach in the
High School of Washingtion,D.C. After a nerve-racking period of indecision
and torture I finally decided to come to Washington. And there is no doubt
whatever that this decision just at that time did change the whole course
of my life.

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Chapter 8
I Go to Washington, D. C to Teach
After coming to Washington I was required to take an examination in
several subjects, one of which was concerning the best methods of teaching,
about which I knew nothing except what I had gained from actual experience 
in Wilberforce University. I take it for granted that I passed for I was 
appointed. Dr. and Mrs. John R. Francis invited me to stay a while in their 
spacious and comfortable home, till I could get permanently settled, and then
I went to live with Mrs. Cox, Mrs. Francis's mother, who was one of the most
lovable women in the world. 
I had been in Washington only a day or two, when I began to hear a
great deal about a young man who had graduated from Harvard University the
same year I received my diploma from Oberlin. He was an honor man, I was
told. When he graduated from Harvard, only those men wore the cap and gown
whose rank entitled them to be speakers. In a class of three hundred white 
men who had the advantage of him in heredity, environment and also in the 
wherewithal to finance a college course this young colored man was one of 
seven who marched in the Commencement Procession wearing his cap and gown.
His father had brought him to Washington from Virginia, when he was
ten years old and he had attended the public schools of the District,
so the citizens were very proud of him indeed. He was quite popular and 
people liked to talk about the first colored boy who had graduated from the 
High School of Washington and who had taken a degree from Harvard University. 
He was described as being tall, very good-looking, a fine dancer and
splendid company on general principles. He was also a great favorite among
girls, of course. I had been in Washington nearly a week and had not seen 
this much-described and frequently discussed young gentleman. Never having
beheld a colored man who had graduated from Harvard University, I must 
confess that I was very eager to meet him. The first Sunday afternoon after 
reaching Washington I was sitting on Dr. Francis's door step and happened to 
glance down the street. Rapidly approaching the house was a tall, dapper
well-dressed young man whom I knew intuitively and instinctively to be the
Harvard graduate, Robert Heberton Terrell, about whom I had heard so much. 
Immediately I jumped to my feet and rushed up stairs impulsively and exclaimed
excitedly to Mrs. Francis, "Mr. Terrell has come." Mrs. Francis who was calm
and unemotional was very much amused at the commotion into which Mr. Terrell's
visit had thrown me and for a long time enjoyed relating the incident. I

62
tried to explain that the only reason I rushed up stairs was because I was
sitting alone and there was no one to introduce me to the stranger. But
Dr. and Mrs. Francis poked a great deal of fun at me just the same.
Mr. Terrell had charge of the Latin department in the High School
and I was designated to assist him. It is safe to assert that never since 
the dawn of creation did two teachers of the same subject get along more
harmoniously and with less friction than did that head of the Latin Department 
in the colored High School in Washington, D. C. and his assistant. I had
some first year Latin classes and a second year class. In addition to a 
first and a second year class Mr. Terrell also taught the Senior class in 
Virgil. Occasionally he invited me to teach this advanced class and seemed
to take pleasure in showing the pupils I was capable of doing to. 
When Mr. Terrell himself was teaching a class and a discussion
arose concerning the construction of a sentence in Virgil, he would sometimes
tell his pupils he did not know whether it was a subjunctive of purpose
of a subjunctive of result, but he would ask Miss. Church and see what 
she thought about it. After a statement like that there were always significant
glances around the room and a few suppressed giggles. Then the next
day Mr. Terrell would be likely to make a report something like this; "I
have talked with Miss. Church about this sentence and she thinks it is a
subjunctive of purpose. It seems to me it is result rather than purpose, but
you had better accept Miss. Church's construction; she knows more about
Latin than I do." Perhaps some boy a little bolder than the rest would remark
sotto voce, "We all knew you would think your assistant was right."
I had an experience in the High School during my first year
which might have seriously affected my influence as a teacher. One day the 
principal who had studied years before at an English University came into
my room,  while I was teaching a first-year class in Latin. He asked a pupil
to decline an adjective of the third declension which had an I stem. When
he reached the genitive plural, the pupil added "ium", as he should have done. 
I observed that our genial, dignified principal opened his eyes wide and looked
at the pupil in a surprised and respectful manner, when she gave the genitive
plural. He called upon several others in the class who did the same
thing. Turning toward me he paused as though he expected the teacher to
speak, and when I remained silent, he called on several other pupils who
declined the adjective in the same way. Then he said sternly, "Miss. Church,
you must take special pains to have your pupils learn the genitive plural



63
correctly. The genitive plural of third declension adjectives ends in "um"
not in "ium".
I was speechless with embarrassment and surprise. I had taken
special pains to teach my pupils which adjectives of the third declension
ended in "um" and which ended in "ium" in the genitive plural and I was
very proud of the fact that even the dull ones rarely made a mistake in 
this respect. And now here was the principal of the High School telling me
in the presence of my pupils that I had instructed them wrong.
Fortunately for me, after the principal had read me that lecture
he took his leave. And then I did the only thing a teacher could do under
similar curcumstances to maintain the respect and confidence of the pupils.
I told them calmly that the principal was a very learned man, but that he
had studied Latin so many years ago, he had forgotten some of the exceptions
to a general rule. I immediately directed my pupils to turn to their
grammars and read the rule governing the point at issue. And there before
their eyes was the very adjective which the principal had said was incorrectly
declined by my pupils cited as an example of an I stem adjective
whose genitive plural ended in "ium" instead of "um".

64
Chapter 9
I Go Abroad.
Long before that first school year in Washington closed my father
assured me definitely that he intended to fulfill his promise to go abroad
with me during the summer vacation. He let me make the arrangements to
suit myself. I decided to take one of the Cook's tours which included a trip
to some of the principal cities in England, Belgium, Switzerland and France.
From Washington I went to New York to visit my mother and to purchase what
I needed before sailing.
There was a very distinguished passenger on The City of Berlin
on which Father and I sailed, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, the half sister
of Harriet Beecher Stowe. From someone on the steamer she heard that I was
going abroad to study and she sent for me to come to see her. She became so
interested in me that she gave me letters of introduction to some of the 
most helpful and influential people in Paris and thereby rendered me a service
which few others would have or could have done. These letters from
Mrs. Hooker where an open sesame to me wherever and whenever I presented
them.
By chance I met in Paris an Oberlin man who told me that Mrs. A. A. F. Johnston,
Dean of Oberlin women, was stopping at the Continental Hotel
and suggested that I call on her. Those who have met and old friend unexpectedly
in a foreign land know how happy I was.
It is hard for me to believe that any young woman could have extracted
more pleasure and profit form a three month's tour in Europe than
I did. I drank in everything of historic interest in great gulps. I could
never see enough in one day and never grew tired. Long stairways I climbed
eagerly, while come of our company groaned aloud and others absolutely refused
to ascend. I can take an affidavit that I never missed a word of explanation
which any guide on the trip gave about anything whatsoever, no
matter how trivial it was. My father's interest in the historical places
we visited and in the rare objects we saw was also unbounded. He insisted
upon having me send postals and letters describing these places which consumed
a great deal of my time and strength. But I wish I could lay hands
on some of these, which I wrote on my first trip abroad, so that I might see
today what was my point of view then. The priceless paintings in the Louvre
opened up an entirely new world to me. It was the first time I had ever
either seen the works of the old masters or the best specimens of the
modern school and I rejoiced in this glorious opportunity of learning something

65
something about art.
Few men could have been more wretched than Father the morning he
boarded the train for Paris, so as to take the steamer sailing home, and
left me standing alone on the platform. He had solemnly promised to let
me study abroad, and I had set my heart on it, and nothing in the world
could have induced me to give up this cherished plan. As he stood in the
station waiting for the train, Father begged me to return home with him.
"But my clothes are in the hotel," I replied. "Surely you do
not want me to leave all my belongings here in Paris," I said. If I had
decided to do that, however, Father would have been one of the happiest men
in the world. Although he rarely showed how deeply moved he was about anything,
there were tears in his eyes when he kissed me good bye and left his
young daughter alone in Paris.
Not a tear was in my eye, however. For at last the time had come
when I could do the work which I had planned so long. I was the happiest
girl on earth. I am sure I felt as Monte Christo must have felt, when he exclaimed,
"The World is mine." Here I was in Paris. I could study French,
visit the wonderful galleries to my heart's content, learn something about
art and attend the theatres. In short, here at last was the realization of
those radiant dreams which had filled my head and my heart for years.
Father had promised to let me study abroad a year, and I knew he would keep
his word. There was nothing to worry me, not a care in the world, I was bubbling
over with enthusiasm and youth.
Just as soon as I could find a suitable pension I left the cosy,
little hotel in the Rue de Richelieu and went to board with a widow who
was highly recommended by one of Mrs. Hooker's friends. She was a typical
French woman who had a young niece, so that it was a decided advantage for
me to secure accommodations in such a home. My landlady was a most capable
and faithful teacher and worked hard to make my pronunciation and accent
correct. By talking to her niece, who could neither understand nor speak a
word of English, I learned many expressions used in ordinary conversation
not generally found in books.
Living in Paris was more expensive than I thought it would be.
I had to spend much more for my room and board than I cared to spend for
those two items alone. Moreover, when I wanted to attend the theatre, it
was necessary to have a chaperone, and pay for her ticket as well as my own,
even when she did not expect an extra fee for her services. I chafed under

66
this condition considerably.
Having secured several addresses from an American girl I wrote
a family in Lausanne, Switzerland, and arranged to go there without telling
my father that I intended to leave Paris, because I feared that he would object
to my travelling in Europe alone. I had definitely made up my mind it
would be more advantageous for me in every way to go to Switzerland, and I 
thought it was better to make the change without asking my father's permission
than to do so, if he insisted upon having me remain in Paris. I felt
greatly handicapped in Paris, because at that time comparatively few American
girls as young as I was, went about the city alone. The little Swiss
Republic beckoned me, because I knew American and English girls were accustomed
to go about unaccompanied.
Before I left Paris I sent my father my Lausanne address and 
then waited in fear and trembling for a reply. After reaching Switzerland
every morning when I awoke my first thought would be, "What if you should
receive a cable from your father ordering you to come home, because you
left Paris without consulting him" But no such tragedy occurred. My father
assured me most emphatically that he had perfect confidence in me, no
matter what I did or where I travelled." I know you can take care of yourself,"
he wrote, "and that you will do the right thing, wherever you are."
After receiving a letter like that from her father, no girl who had a bit
of conscience or a spark of honor could possibly have abused his confidence
in her by doing anything of which she knew he could not approve.
The family with whom I boarded in Lausanne consisted of the
father, mother and two daughters about my own age. My room was very small,
just large enough for a single bed, a little table and a chair. It had only
one little window. But from that single little window, what a glorious
view I had. I could see the now-capped Alps towering heavenward and at
right angles to them the low-laying Jura Mountains which somehow linger in
my memory as being always brown.
Sarah, the younger of the two daughters, was an artist of considerable
talent, and played the piano exceedingly well and also painted
much better than the average amateur. She appealed to me all the more
strongly, perhaps, because the strict regime under which she lived differed
so strikingly from the soft, easy life led by her pampered sister. I have
read about favoritism being shown some particular child in a family, but I 
have never seen such a flagrant case of it as the one I witnessed in Lausanne.

67
The father of the family, who was connected in some way with the
Suisse Simplon railway, enjoyed taking a company of young people on a long
hike. Early Sunday morning we would take a train at Lausanne for some near-
by town from which we could climb a mountain that he wanted us especially
to see. On our way both up and down the mountain, we would stop at some way-
side inn,and have a light repast which was always topped off by some de-
licious beverage which Monsieur G. would brew himself. No matter how much
we please with him or tried to bribe him,we could never persuade our host
to divulge the secret of the ingredients or the manner in which he made it.
There was no use peeping and prying or following him,trying to surprise
him in the act of concocting it, as he always successfully eluded us.
Of all the cities and towns visited near Lausanne nothing interest-
ed me more than the Castle of Chillon.
In Lausanne I attended a private school for girls. Most of the 
pupils were younger than myself,although I was by no means the oldest.
I recited all my lessons in French and was required to write compositions
in French like the others. I leaned much about the literature and history
of Europe that I had not previously known and acquired many new points of
view.
I lived a long distance from the school and had to climb a steep 
incline,almost a young mountain,to reach it in the morning.
In the family where I lived,the conditions were almost ideal. In
addition to the two daughters of my own age,a young girl came from the
German Switzerland,speaking the German of her section which nobody could
understand. We four girls had all the fun that was rightfully due us under
our own vine and fig tree.
Following the custom of the country we drank wine for dinner. But 
I grew tired of the wine after a while and longed for a drink of nice cold
water which I heard could be procured from a spring nearby. I told Lizette,
the maid, if she would bring me a pitcher full for my dinner, I would make
it worth her while. She did so and I drank three glasses of that cold water
at the dinner table.
Mme.G was shocked and begged me not to jeopardize my health in 
that way. She was sure that cold water would paralyze my digestive appara-
tus. The girls were almost in tears,as they saw me commit suicide before
their very eyes. It was the first time Mme. G. had ever seen a human being
drink cold water during a meal,she said,and she believed that I had injured
myself seriously. She was so persuaded that I would be very ill as the

68
result of such disobedience to the rules of health that she made me give
her the address of my parents ,so that she might have it handy in case she 
would have to cable them during the night. And they were surprised when 
they saw that I not only lived to tell the tale,but that I suffered no ill 
effects from the cold water at all.
After remaining in Lausanne a year I felt that I had spent as
much time studying French as I could afford to spend. I had been careful to
learn to pronounce certain words as Parisians do,when there was a differ-
ence between their pronunciation and that of the Swiss.
I wanted to study German and I decided to go to Berlin. I had heard
that the purest German was spoken in Dresden. But I had resided in the
Capital of the United States and had spent quite a while in London and Paris,
so that it seemed logical to live in the capital of Germany. I felt that if
I learned to speak German as well as it could be taught in Berlin, I would
be as proficient in the language as I could hope to be.
With a heavy heart,in spite of the fact that I was doing exactly
what I had planned to do, I tore myself away from my delightful surround-
ings and left my dear friends in Lausanne. I was the closest friend Marie
had ever had and she was inconsolable. I shed many bitter tears myself,when
I bade her good bye. But,after boarding the train,youth's grief at leaving
friends was greatly assuaged by the magnificent scenery which was unrolled
before my enraptured eyes. Nothing that Nature has ever done could be more
wonderful than Switzerland in winter. It is useless to try to paint a word 
picture of the snow-capped Alps. One may read volumes on the subject with-
out being able to have any conception of the reality.
Nothing but views given us in the Movies can help to visualize the 
grandeur,the beauty and the sublimity of the scenery which is unfolded on
every hand in Switzerland,one of the garden spots of the world. Although I 
know I cannot succeed, it is a temptation to try to convey to my readers
the impression this trip through Switzerland in that winter made upon my
youthful mind. I was awed, inspired and uplifted by the scene.

69
Chapter 10
I Study in Germany.
     On the way to Berlin I stopped at Munich and Dresden.  In Munich
I employed a guide to show me the city.  I had spoken nothing but French
for a year, and although I had spoken German fairly well before I had left
the United States, both my tongue and my ear were out of practice somewhat.
As soon as I reached Germany, however, I was delighted to see that I could
understand what was said to me and could express everything I wanted to 
convey.
     My guide, a red-faced, typical German, suggested that he could carry
my Baedeker's Guide Book more conveniently than I could.  I had bought it
before I left Lausanne, so I could read up on the journey I was about to
take and decide what I wanted to see, before I reached the places.  It always
amused me to see Americans with their heads buried in the guide books
and their eyes glued to the printed page instead of looking at the works
of art or at the structures they had come so far to see.
     I forthwith entrusted my Baedeker to the guide's watchful care.  As
we boarded a street car on our way to a church, a mand standing on the rear
platform looked at me very seriously and said something to me in German
which I could not quite understand, but which sounded like a warning of
some kind.  In thinking about the words spoken rapidly I was sure I heard
"Geldbeutel", and I knew it meant purse.  I observed also that the guide
looked daggers at this man who was speaking directly at me, as though he
were trying to tell me something for my own good.  It finally dawned on me
that the stranger was warning me about my guide and telling me to watch
my purse.
     When I settled with my guide that evening I understood perfectly
what the man on the trolley car tried to tell me. After paying him for the
time he had given me, I asked him for my book.  At first he denied having
taken it from me at all.  He could not remember doing so.  But when I insist-
ed he had, he began to search carefully through his many trousers and sweat-
er pockets, as though he were trying to find it.  After looking for it in
vain, he opined that he must have lost it sometime during the day.  But when
I told him in  German that if he did not find my Baedeker, I would call the
police, he fished it from the depths of his sweater, being obliged to insert
his hand so far down his clothing I feared he could not bring it up again.
But when his hand finally did heave in sight, so did my Baedeker's guide
book.  That was one of the very few cases in which an effort was made to



70
steal from me, while I was abroad.  Sometimes in Paris the cabmen or the
small tradesmen would try to withhold a few centimes in making change, but
they did it so cleverly and had reduced their manipulations, their gestic-
ulations and their explanations to such an art that it was almost a pleas-
ure to be cheated by those skillful gents.  No woman of any nationality
ever tried to cheat me out of a sou from the time I left the United States
till I returned.
     When I reached Dresden I was glad I had decided to study in
Berlin.  The city was full of Americans and English.  I turned on 
the streets, I heard my mother tongue.  I knew that a foreign city full of
my white country-men was no place for a colored girl.  I was trying to flee
from the evils of race prejudice, so common and depressing in my own country,
and it seemed very stupid indeed for me to place myself in a position to
encounter it abroad.
     In Dresden I received my first taste of German opera, where the
most noted singers were appearing at that time.  I went alone, for it was
never unpleasant for me to go anywhere unaccompanied.  From the time I first
began to travel, I preferred to go by myself, so that I might see just what
interested me and stop to look at it as long as I pleased without feeling
that I was annoying somebody else who was not so eager to gaze on it as I
was.  On several occasions I have had the pleasure of traveling with people
who were interested in the same things that I was and then I can truthfully
say "I had the time of my life."
     When I reached Berlin I decided to remain temporarily at a
pension on Markgrafen Strasse kept by a neat, amiable little Jewess.  She had
only one vacant room which was so small I did not see how I could be com-
fortable in it.  There was no place to hang my clothes and no way to heat
the room except by a gas stove and I had always heard that heat from a gas
stove was injurious to the health.  For that reason I looked at a room at an-
other pension and talked with the proprietor about it, discussed the price
and told him I would notify him at a certain time whether I would take it
or not.  In the meantime the guests in the Markgrafen Strasse pension were
so agreeable, were so eager to have me stay, and the clever landlady made
the little room so attractive and comfortable, I decided to remain there.
The fact that there was no Americans in this pension to tempt me to speak
English was an added inducement for me to stay where I was.
     According to promis, therefore, I communicated my decision to the

71
proprietor of the pension who had shown me the room several days before.
He claimed I had definitely engaged the room, that he had saved it for me
and insisted upon having me pay the rent for a month.  As the less of two
evils I acceded to his demand.  Some American women who had seen me pass
through the hall told the proprietor that I was quite swarthy and it was
barely possible I represented a race which was socially ostracized in the
United States by all white people who had any self respect.  I learned
afterward on good authority that my countrywomen would have made it decidedly 
unpleasant for me, if I had gone to that pension to live.
     When I reached Berlin I had not heard from home for three weeks.
Before leaving Lausanne I had instructed Father to send any letters Post
Restante to Berlin.  As soon as I reached Berlin, therefore, and decided on
the pension at which I would remain temporarily, I started for the city
post office, eager to get the mail which I knew was awaiting me.  I received 
many letters and when I had finished reading them, I started to return
to my boarding house.  It was the first week in December, the afternoons
were short and I observed it was growing dark rapidly.  When I looked for
the paper containing my new address, it was no where to be found.  While
joyously reading my letters from home, I had undoubtedly lost that slip of
paper of such value to me.  So there I was in the great city of Berlin with
night coming on, actually lost, acquainted with no one, while practically
everything I possessed was in my luggage deposited in an apartment house
which I could not locate to save my life.
      After cudgeling my brain for a long time I thought I remembered
the name of the street on which my pension was located.  I was also able to
tell the policeman to whom I related my tale of woe the name of the car I
had boarded to reach the post office and I described pretty accurately the
corner on which I had taken it.  So wonderfully systematically is everything
conducted in Germany that it is quite easy to secure quickly any information 
one needs.  The names of the people who keep boarding houses are on file
and a stranger may remain in a city only a short while, before he is required
to register his name and tell everything about himself the authorities want
to know, and they want to know everything.
     And so, after several processes of induction and deduction plus
consultations with a certain office I discovered where I had deposited my
belongings.  When I finally reached my pension, it was quite dark and I found
that both my landlady and all her boarders were very much alarmed about the



72
inexplicably long absence of the young American girl who had just reached 
the big city.  After such an experience, I carefully guarded my addresses 
in the future and was never lost in a strange city again.
     Our family consisted of two brothers, Hebrews, one of them being
a bank official, very learned, sedate and mature.  The other was much younger 
and was connected with the stock exchange.  He was an entertaining,
witty Lothario.  Then there was a tall, young German with a magnificent
physique who was studying something or other which was a dead secret and
who was always talking about a girl to whom he was engaged back home.
"Meine Braut" was a subject which he never tired discussing and regaled
us with it "in season and out."  He had been an officer in the army, since
he was living in the "hey dey" of German militarism, and he told us over
and over again how his fiancee used to come to his house every day, so that
she and his mother might look out of the window at him as he proudly marched by.  
No human being could possibly be more conceited than he was and no
human being, not even excepting Bismark himself, could have believed more implicitly 
in brute force than he did.  Not only did he believe in War and
all the horrors incident thereto, but he smacked his lips with relish as he
told how he intended to whip his children and boss his wife.
     There was also an interesting little clerk who was "head over
heels" in love with the landlady who had no idea of marrying a man as poor
as he was.  Being of a romantic turn of mind I did everything in my power
to soften Fraulein's heart, but she always silenced me by saying that she
herself had long outgrown the romantic age, when women marry for love alone.
It was the first time I had ever heard a woman declare "open and above
board" that she did not intend to marry for love and I marvelled at her
frankness, to say the least.
     The two Hebrew brothers helped me greatly in learning German
and becoming thoroughly acquainted with Berlin as well as its interesting
suburbs.  They advised me with reference to the books it was best to read
and directed me to various objects of interest not generally mentioned in
a traveller's guide, and which I should not have seen but for them.  On several 
occasions these two brothers and a cousin took me to see the castles in
the environs of Berlin.  I especially enjoyed visiting the one at which
Frederick, the second, and Queen Victoria's daughter, his consort, spent their
honeymoon.
     This Englishwoman was the first person to establish a school
in Germany for the higher education of girls.  But the German idea of the

73
higher education of girls differed very materially from that entertained
in the United States.  Some of the professors from the University of Berlin
delivered lectures at this girl's school which easily might have been digest-
ed by children of twelve.  But the educational facilities for the so-called
higher education offered women at this institution were greater than those
which could be found anywhere else in Germany at that time and they, there-
fore, were gratefully accepted by many.
     I attended this school and one day when the Empress Frederick, who
founded it, visited it.  I courtesied to her in true German fashion like the
other girls.  Twice and sometimes three times a week I attended the opera,
while I remained in Berlin.  I frequently attended the theatre also, for
there is no better way of educating the ear and acquiring the correct pro-
nunciation in studying a foreign language than by listening to good actors.
I had a dear little Russian friend who was one of the most remarkable
linguists I have ever met.  She spoke at least seven languages fluently.
We usually attended the opera together and sat in the peanut gallery which
was frequented by students from whose comments I learned much more about
the opera and music on general principles than I could have acquired in
any other way.
     Thus I became acquainted with the youth of many lands, some of
whom were rated as geniuses and expected sooner or later to startle the
world with their achievements.  Many of them were poor in this world's 
goods, however rich in talent and great expectations they were.  To me it
was pathetic to see the desperate struggle to get along and keep body and
soul together which many of them made.  The schemes which some of them
hatched to make life a bit easier than it was were also amusing.
     One morning the landlady knocked at my door and told me that
some callers wished to see me.  When they were ushered into my room, one of
my Belgian friends introduced me to a blind musician from Austria.  He had
come to propose marriage to me.  He had probably heard from some American
student that I had a few drops of African blook in my veins, was very fond
of music and might be glad to marry a promising Caucasian musician.  Since I
hailed from the United States, he took it for granted that I had a respect-
able bank account.  He was perfectly willing, therefore, to link his destiny
with mine, assuring me that what he lacked in money he more than made up in
talent.  I learned from a reliable source that this was true.  He begged me to
74
marry him and he promised to become a great artist.  Several of the friends
he brought with him gave glowing accounts of the laurels he had already
won as a pianist.  He would surely be heard from some day, they assured me.
There was no doubt about that, and then, they said, I would be proud to be
the wife of one of the greatest virtuosos in Europe.
     The blind musician explained that he had heard me talk on several
occasions, he like my point of view about some of the questions discussed
and thought I had a beautiful voice.  He had dared to come to propose as he
had done, because one of his friends had pursued a similar course and had
succeeded in marrying an American girl with a lot of money.
     Although I was greatly amused and could scarcely conceal my delight,
I felt sorry for the afflicted man and tried not to say anything that would
wound his feelings.  I declined the offer, however, in no uncertain terms,
saying I had been reared to believe that marrying for anything but love was
a sin, and that his cold-blooded proposition to enter holy matrimony for
any other reason shocked me beyond expression.
     While I was in Berlin I was greatly indebted to a young man of my
own race for several musical treats I enjoyed and for information concern-
ing musical people which I could have secured from no other source.  And the
way I happened upon this friend was very romantic indeed.  Shortly after I
reached Berlin I walked out with an American girl whom I had known in
Oberlin, to see the beautiful shops so brilliantly lighted and artistically
decorated for Christmas.  We had stopped several times to see the wonderful
display.  I felt that somebody was following me and I turned around several
time to see if I could discover anyone.  Once I thought I saw a man stop
suddenly quite a little distance behind me, but I was not sure, so I said no-
thing about it to my companion.  We continued our stroll stopping now and
then to discuss the beautiful objects displayed.  Just as we drew up to a
window I turned around suddenly and saw standing behind us a young man with
whom I had been well acquainted for years and who was then studying music
in Berlin.
     He had suddenly spied me, he said, as he turned the corner, and
although he felt sure he recognized me, he could not believe the evidence of
his eyes, because he had not heard that I had left the United States to travel
and study in Europe.  He was so impressed with the resemblance I bore to the
girl he knew at home, however, he decided to follow my companion and myself


75
until he could catch a glimpse of my face and he was just coming up to
greet me when I recognized him.  This colored man had remarkable talent
for the violin.  At that time Joachim, one of the greatest teachers of the
violin of modern times, taught nobody who was not unmistakably talented
in that instrument.  Neither wealth, power, nor high social standing
could tempt this great master to teach anybody who was not a presumtive
genius.  It was rumored in Berlin that more than one member of the aristocracy 
had implored Joachim to teach his son, without avail.  But the
great Joachim taught this young colored man from the United States, so impressed 
was he with his superior talent.  Instead of confining himself to
the violin, however, this young musician has become a renowned composer of
popular music characteristic of his race.
     I met another young colored man who was studying in Europe, because 
he possessed exceptional talent.  He seemed listless rather than lazy
and it pained me to hear from some of his friends that he was wasting his
time.  When I urged this young man to avail himself of the wonderful opportunities 
and advantages he enjoyed, he replied, "What's the use of my
trying to do anything extraordinary or worth while?  A man must have some
kind of a racial background to amount to anything.  He must have a firm
racial foundation on which to build.  What have we accomplished as a race?
Almost nothing," he said with disgust.  "We are descended from slaves.  How
can you expect a people with such a background as that to compete successfully 
with white people?"
     I confessed to him that I myself had once become very much depressed 
and discouraged when, as a young girl, I realized for the first time
that I had descended from slaves.  But I told the young man that I had recovered 
my equilibriam immediately, when I learned from the study of history 
that with a single exception practically all the races of the earth
had at some time in the past been the subject of a stronger race, so that
when colored people in this country passed through a period of bondage,
they were simply suffering a fate common to other racial groups.  And then
I called his attention to the marvellous progress which the colored people
of the United States had made in less than forty years.
     I argued with him long and loud to convince him that in spite
of almost insurmountable obstacles a few colored people had even then accomplished something worthwhile along several lines and that as a race we
were rapidly forging ahead in many fields.  I could not convert him to my



76
point of view, however, and failed to prove to him how fatal to the race
would be the general acceptance of such a theory as he advanced.  One of
that man's sons has had a brilliant career.  Unlike his father he was not at
all obsessed with the idea that a man of African descent is necessarily
doomed to mediocrity at best.  No young colored person in the United States
today can truthfully offer as an excuse for lack of ambition or aspiration
that members of his racial group have accomplished so little he is discouraged 
from attempting anything himself.  For there is scarcely a field
of human endeavor into which colored people have been allowed to enter in
which there is not at least one worthy representative.
     During my first winter in Berlin my mother wrote me that she
and my brother were coming abroad in the spring to spend the summer with
me in Europe, that they would land in Liverpool and she wanted me to meet
them.
     Just before I left Berlin I was the recipient of an unique
gift which I have always highly prized.  "Fraulein, what is you cost of
arms?" the elder Mannheimer asked me one day.  "You know full well that I
have no coat of arms," I replied.  "Well, you deserve one and you shall
have one," he said.  A few days after that he and his brother had been embossed
in an American flag.  So I think I have the distinction of being the only
person of African descent in the United States of America who has a coat of
arms.
     While I was preparing to leave Berlin I broke a small hand
mirror, and how wretched I was after that.  I did not know until then how
superstitious I was.  I feared that broken mirror was an omen that some
terrible disaster would overtake my loved ones at sea.  I reached Liverpool
at least ten days before the steamer arrived, and in spite of strenuous
efforts to control myself, I was very apprehensive indeed.  I dreaded to
read the newspapers, lest I might learn that the steamer had gone done and
everybody on board lost.  The afternoon that I saw the speck, far out on the
ocean, that I knew was the steamer bearing my mother and brother was a 
happy one to me indeed.  I waved my umbrella so vigorously that I broke it
into pieces, before I realized what I had done.  Never since Mother and my
brother arrived safely in Liverpool in spite of the broken mirror have I
allowed myself to worry much about any superstition.
     While I was waiting in Liverpool some of the women I saw

77
made an indellible impression on me.  It seemed to me that they were the
most tattered, degraded and depraved women I had ever beheld anywhere on
earth.  I had never seen women fight each other so savagely in the street
as those women did.  The policemen paid little attention to their drunken
brawls.  The unfortunate, degraded women seemed only to amuse them.  I saw women fight till the rags
they wore had been almost torn from their bodies.  If the women in the
other cities that I visited were as degraded as those I saw in Liverpool,
I did not see them.



78
Chapter 11
In Europe with Mother and Brother.
     Just before Mother started for Europe she enjoyed a rare visitation 
of good fortune.  A plumber who happened to be working for her one
day persuaded her to buy a ticket in the Louisiana lottery which at that 
time flourished like the proverbial green bay tree, but has since been
put out of commission altogether.  She paid a dollar for it, then threw it
aside and forgot all about it, as she had done many times before no doubt.  After
a while this plumber whom Mother had neither seen nor heard from since
he sold her the ticket, came to the house to tell her that the number on
the ticket that she bought had won the first prize in the Louisiana
lottery and she was entitled to $15,000.  My mother thought the plumber
was joking, until he showed her the number of the ticket which he had
carefully preserved.
     But, where in the world was that valuable ticket?  Who knew?
Mother certainly did not.  She had often bought tickets before from anybody 
who happened to offer her one, had promptly thrown them aside and
forgotten all about them.  The house was searched from top to bottom.  The
contents of all the drawers were dumped out and carefully scanned.  The
pockets of every dress and coat in the house were emptied.  Bureau scarfs
were raised in the hope that the little ticket might have been slipped
under one of them and left there for safe keeping.  But all in vain.  The
valuable little ticket could not be found.
     Finally, Anna, a German girl who had been working for Mother
several years, ever since she came from the Fatherland, remembered that
she had recently cleaned out a drawer in the buffet, had thrown a lot of
trash in the waste paper basket and had not had time to either burn it up
or to dump it into the trash barrel to be carted away by the city.  She
ran to the basket, hastily pulled out the papers which had been marked
for destruction and there at the bottom of the pile was the innocent, unobtrusive 
little ticket which was worth $15,000 in cash.
     Mother gave the plumber who notified her of her good fortune
$1,000.  She gave Anna $300 for finding the ticket and sent me $300 to
buy a fur coat.  I was in Lausanne at the time and put this money into the
bank, resolving not to touch a penny of it till Mother could help me select
whatever I bought.  The good fortune enable Mother to travel in Europe
with her son and daughter without being worried about financing the trip.

79 

The first thing she did when she reached London was to order a 
handsome seal skin ulster for herself, selecting her own skins, and another 
for her daughter at one of the best furriers in the city. Mother's
knowledge of materials of all kinds always astonished me. she knew good 
quality in every thing pertaining to clothes or to the furnishings of a 
home. In her prime was one of the best dressed women I have ever seen. 
Then three or four suits were ordered right away for my brother and a 
dress suit that was made to order for him that twas the very last word in 
that article at that time. 

Whatever Mother wanted she bought, if she happened to have the 
money that minute to pay for it. She literally fulfilled the Scriptures 
and obeyed to the letter the injunction not to lay up treasures for yourself 
on earth. She valued money only as it ministered to her own immediate 
needs, or to the needs of those she loved, and provided what luxuries she 
craved. So she freely spent the money she had won, stopping at the best 
hotels, using cabs whenever she wanted them and enjoying all the pleasures 
which travel in a foreign country affords. In vain I tried to persuade my 
generous, improvident mother not to spend her money so lavishly, but she
paid no attention at all to this advice. If she saw anything she even suspected 
I needed or would enjoy she bought it for me in spite of any protest 
I might make. 

In Paris we had an experience which might have resulted very disastrously 
indeed. We attended the opera one night and took a cab to go home. 
We had been driving what seemed to me to be a long time, when I suddenly 
realized that we were getting into the suburbs of Paris instead of traversing 
the streets to which I was accustomed and which led to our hotel. When 
I asked the driver where he was going he grunted something which gave me   
to understand that he knew what he was doing and looked out on both sides 
of the road as though he expected to see somebody. I had heard of strangers
being taken by cabmen to deserted spots near Paris to be robbed and sometimes 
murdered, if they resisted, and I suspected that this cabman was looking 
for a confederate to help steal my mother's diamonds which were sparkling 
in her ears. With all the courage I could summon I told the cabman to 
turn around immediately and gave him to understand that if he did not obey 
my orders my brother was prepared to force him to do so. Much to my surprise 
and relief, the cabman turned around at once and drove straight to our hotel, 

80

which was quite a distance in the opposite direction from which he had 
been going. Ever since then I have been timid about hiring a cab in a 
strange city at night. 

During the Paris Exposition in 1889 we met a sure enough, flesh 
and blood African prince, who was one of the most courteous, most cultures, 
magnetic and attractive personalities I have ever seen anywhere in the 
world. He had been educated in Paris and had acquired the manners of the 
French, although he was dressed in oriental splendor. My mother always insisted 
that this prince made such a deep impression on her daughter, that 
she would undoubtedly have become an African princess, if she had only had a 
chance. 

It was very difficult for my mother and brother to secure accommodations 
to return home in time for the opening of Marietta College 
which my brother was attending, because so many Americans had gone to Paris 
to visit the Exposition and all wanted to leave by the middle of September. 
While rushing from one steamship office to another I ran into a young 
colored girl with whom I had been well acquainted in Washington. This was 
one of many illustrations that occurred to prove to me that the world is 
very small indeed. I visited very few places, no matter how diminutive in 
size, in which I failed to meet someone I had either known in the United 
States or had met abroad. 

It was finally arranged that my mother and brother should sail from 
Hamburg on the Hamburg-American line and we went there to spend the last 
few days of our vacation together. If I had known how hard it would be 
for me to say good bye to them and see them sail away for home, leaving me
behind on a foreign shore, I might now have had the courage to decide to 
remain abroad, although I wanted very much to study in Europe another year 
and my father had given me permission to do so. 

As soon as the steamer had sailed, I rushed to the hotel, threw 
my effects into a valise and took the train for Berlin, where I planned to 
spend the winter. I went to a hotel instead of my pension, when I reached  
Berlin, because I did not want any of my friends or acquaintances to see
how wretched I was. I had no appetite and could not force myself to eat. 
I remained in bed, for I felt too weak to dress. At noon on the third day
the proprietor came to my room to see what was the matter with me. The 
maid had told him, he said, that I was ill, had eaten nothing for three days

  
   
    


  

  
 

81
and he intended to send for a doctor.  I assured him that there was nothing 
the matter with me and that I would be well enough the next day to
go out.  I had been travelling all summer, I explained, was a bit tired and
shaken, because my mother and brother had just sailed for home.
     "Have you any friends or acquaintances here in Berlin?" he inquired.  
When I told him I had he insisted that I give him their addresses.  
I had decided not to return to the pension in which I had formerly
lived, because I thought a change of environment would be advantageous to
me.  For that reason I did not give the proprietor the names of my good
friends in the pension in which I had had such a happy time.  I decided to
refer him to an Oberlin friend.
     She came posthaste the next morning, insisted that I was simply
homesick and that I must come to her pension at once.  I protested vigorously 
against doing so, because I did not wish to live among English-speaking 
people, since it would tempt me to speak my mother tongue too much.  Way
down deep in my heart I feared to board in a house where there were many
Americans, for I am afraid that I might get into some kind of trouble on
account of race prejudice.  But my Oberlin friend overcame all my objections, 
promised solemnly that she would allow me to speak English only on
the Fourth of July and Christmas, selected a room in her pension for me,
made all the arrangements and moved me there bag and baggage that very
afternoon.
     I had been in Fraulein von Finck's pension but a few days, when
I observed that a woman whose complexion was quite swarthy fastened her
eyes upon me every time I came into her presence.  Finally she accosted me
one evening when we were in the reception room, and asked me what my nationality 
was.  "I have heard that you are an American," she said, "but you
are rather dark to be an American, aren't you?"  I laughingly replied that
I was a "dark American."  "And I am dark like you, too, you observe.  I am a
Spaniard and my husband is German.  Every time I see a woman who is not
fair, I become very much interested in her indeed."
     That was the beginning of one of the most instructive and delightful 
experiences I had while I was abroad.  This Spanish woman was the
wife of a German in the German army.  Once in a while they left their residence 
and lived in a pension where there were young people and students of
different nationalities, because they enjoyed coming into contact with them.
Frau von Weckstern liked to talk with them, associate with them and learn


82
their aims and ambitions in life.  Through my Spanish friend I was introduced 
into several distinguished social circles into which the other
Americans in the pension did not have entree.  And this opportunity came
to me because my complexion was dark.  It was the first time in my life
that any piece of good fortune came to me because my face was not white.
It was indeed a rare experience for a colored girl hailing from the United
States.
     I had been in Fraulein von Finck's pension but a short time, when
I saw two young American men eyeing me as though they were anything but
please to see me in their midst.  These two students, each of whom must have
been thirty years old, and maybe more, were studying medicine, one being
from Baltimore and the other hailing from Washington, D.C.  I observed that
Fraulein, who was literally fair, fat and forty, quite loquacious and especially 
catered to Americans, held long conversations with these two
medical students, who could neither speak nor understand German very well.
But Fraulein could speak English and enjoyed practicing it on Americans
who would let her do it.
     One day she called me and told me that she would like to see me
in her room that afternoon at two o'clock.  When I entered, Fraulein appeared embarassed and it was evident that she did not know how to say what was
on her mind.  "To what nationality do you belong, Fraulein Church?" she began.  
"I am an American," I replied.  "But you are darker than the average
American, aren't you?"  She flushed a deep red, when she asked this question.
"Yes, I am darker than some Americans," I admitted.  "Can you go to a hotel
in the United States?"  I knew by that question that somebody had explained
to her the disabilities under which colored people labor in the United
States.  "I certainly can," I answered.  "I have have been going to good
hotels with my father, ever since I was a little girl.  But why do you ask
these questions, Fraulein von Finck?  What difference does it make to you
what my nationality is, so long as I conduct myself properly in your pension 
and pay my bills?  There are several nationalities in your pension, you
know."
     And then Fraulein von Finck "laid all her cards on the table"
and related the whole story from start to finish.  "The two medical
students from Baltimore and Washington tell me that you are a negro,
Fraulein Church," she said, "and that you are not allowed to stop at a
first class boarding house or hotel in the United States.  They also say

83 

that if I allow you to remain here in my pension, no self-respecting 
people from the United States will stop with me. I told them that an 
American girl who was well acquainted with you and had gone to school 
with you in your own country had engaged the room for you in my house and 
had persuaded you to come against your will. They explained that by saying 
that there are a few cranks in the United States who are willing to 
associate with Negroes and who for that reason are socially ostracized by 
self respecting people. Them I told them that the young men and women who 
are your friends are highly educated, refined people who associate with the 
best Americans who live in Berlin. 

But the medical students told me that I was greatly mistaken 
and declared that just as Jews are socially ostracized here in Germany, so 
Negroes are socially ostracized all over the United States. They stated 
positively that Negroes can not secure accommodations in decent hotels
there. Nor can they buy tickets for the theatres, unless they are willing 
to sit in the gallery set apart for them." But Fraulein Church is not a 
Negro," I said. "She is not black. She is not much darker than Frau General 
von Wenckstern, who is Spanish. 

"But she is classed as a Negro in the United States, whether 
she is black or not," they said. "If an individual has only a drop of 
African blood in his veins," those young men explained, "white people in 
the United States consider him a Negro."

In short, there was nothing these young white men from the 
United States could possibly tell this German woman, which would cause 
her to reject and repudiate me, that they failed to relate or reveal. I 
told Fraulein von Finck that I had attended school with white Americans 
all my life, that I had graduated from a High School, an Academy and a 
first class college conducted by white Americans for white and black 
students alike, that I had enjoyed the same privileges and had been accorded 
the same treatment in them that the white students received. I 
impressed it upon her that I was by no means the only colored student who 
had attended institutions of learning in which colored students were accepted 
along with the white. I explained also that the discrimination 
against colored people in hotels, theatres and schools which had been so 
graphically described by the medical students was practically confined to 
one section of the United States. At that time this was essentially true. 
But since then prejudice has rapidly spread all over the country.  

84 

After expressing my opinion freely and relieving my mind I told Fraulein 
von Finck I would not embarrass her by remaining under her roof another 
night. I felt I could not retain my self respect, if I stayed another
second in the same boarding house with two men who were so full of prejudice 
against my race that they would drive from comfortable quarters a 
young colored girl who was alone in a foreign land three thousand miles 
from home. 

Fraulein begged me to remain. She assured me that she simply 
wanted to talk with me, so that I might explain matters to her. When I 
insisted upon leaving the house immediately, she wept and declared that she 
would never forgive herself for having spoken to me at all, if I should 
leave. She assured me that she preferred to have me stay with her, but of 
I insisted upon going anyway she urged me not to move for another month, 
at least. 

Very much against my will and my best judgement I kept my room 
a week longer. This incident proved to me that among some Americans race 
prejudice is such an obsession that they can not lay it aside even in a 
foreign land, where it does not affect colored people, and where there is 
no danger that they will be pestered to any appreciable extent by the objectionable     
Negro. These two young men had been reared in an atmosphere of 
such relentless race prejudice that the chivalry of the southern gentlemen 
snapped at the sight of a young colored woman who was alone in a foreign 
land trying to improve her mind. They did not hesitate to humiliate me, 
wound my sensibilities and disturb y peace by attempting to persuade the 
landlady to put me out of her house. 

But, after all, I was not sorry that I went to Fraulein von 
Finck's, for Frau General von Wenckstern made it possible for me to see a 
phase of life among the aristocracy of Germany which I could have observed in 
no other way. Moreover, she introduced me to a fine young man who was a 
graduate of Heidelberg University, a counselor at law and who belonged to 
an old, distinguished family. 

One evening she arranged a theatre party to which this 
young man was invited. Between the acts I was quite sure I heard him saying 
something about me to Frau General von Weckstern. I could not help hearing him 
exclaim in surprise; "Why don't the Americans like her?"And then in disgust, 
"What do they claim is the matter with her?" After that some words     
   
  

 
      

85

reached my ears that made me certain he was paying me compliments. 

Herr von Devitz took me home from the theatre party, and, after 
discussing the difference between the educational system of Germany and 
that of the United States, he was very much surprised to learn that I had 
received the degree of A.B. from college. Observing that he was quite 
skeptical about my having studied Greek, I quoted the first line of Homer's 
Iliad to him. He stopped on the street abruptly and was transfixed to the 
spot. I am sure that if I had built a steam engine before his eyes, he 
could not have been more astonished, not to say shocked, than he was, when he 
heard me quote a line of Greek. "Um Gottes Willen, Fraulein," he exclaimed, 
"there is not another girl in the whole German Empire who can rattle off 
Greek like that." But I assured him that he was much mistaken, and that 
there were many American girls in the German Empire who could rattle off 
Greek much better than I could and who had graduated from college just as 
I had. 

After leaving Fraulein von Finck's I succeeded in finding a delightful 
boarding place in the home of a widow of a Court minister who had 
two daughters about my own age, as it had been my good fortune to find in 
Lausanne. She lived in an apartment not far from the Philharmonic, where the 
great von Bulow directed his wonderful orchestra. 

One of the daughters of this household was a demure young women 
with plenty of latent fire which she always kept under perfect control. 
She was engaged to a young man who did not live in Berlin and she spent 
the major part of every Sunday afternoon writing him long letters. Her 
sister, however, was a regular hoyden, a bundle of mischief and delighted in 
letting the world know it. She had been off to school somewhere and boasted 
that she and the other girls in her set smoked, whenever they liked. At 
that time I had never heard of girls from respectable families smoking and 
I was amazed. I had never seen a woman smoking, not to mention a young girl, 
and I had not yet heard that many women in Europe had acquired the habit. 

But this young German girl had heard that all American girls 
smoked, and she believed that I was misrepresenting the facts, to say the 
least, when I denied that allegation. But, in this case, there was no use 
trying to "defy the alligator," for she firmly believed that American women 
and girls committed indiscretions of every kind without even attracting 
attention. 

After I lived in Berlin a while it was easy to understand why

86 

and how this estimate was placed upon American girls. Freed from restraint 
at home, a goodly number of them studying abroad had violated the proprieties, 
perhaps, without any evil intent. Many Germans, therefore, judged 
American girls as a whole by the indiscreet few whom they saw in their 
country or about whose behavior they had heard. It was very interesting 
as well as painful to me to see that American girls were the victims of 
the same kind of blanket accusations made by the Germans as that of which 
colored people are victims in the United States. 

In Frau Oberprediger Hoches, I spoke German all the time and was never 
tempted to lapse into English. I enjoyed the mischief and fun of the 
younger daughter, but the bond of union between us would have been much 
closer, if she had not hated the Jews so fiercely and bitterly. She was 
poking fun at them all the time. According to her everything they did was 
wrong. She reeled off story after story at their expense. It amazed me to 
see hoe a girl so young could hate so deeply a race of which no representative 
had ever done either herself or any members of her family any harm. 
Her attitude toward the Jews irritated me and annoyed me greatly. I would 
never laugh at her stories in which the Jews were made the butt of ridicule, 
no matter how funny they were. And she had a remarkable sheaf of them, to 
be sure. I could not help thinking how the race with which I myself am 
identified is misrepresented, ridiculed and slandered by people who feel 
the same animosity against it as the young German girl manifested toward 
the Jews.   

After she had criticized and ridiculed the Jews one day, I said, 
"Fraulein, I am a member of a race whose faults and mistakes are exaggerated 
by its enemies and detractors just as you are exaggerating 
those of the Jews, and if you should come to the United States, these people
would make out as bad a case against as you have made against the Jews. 
The people who see little or no good in my racial group delight in telling 
the world about its vices and defects just as you have enjoyed regaling 
me with those you claim are characteristic of the Jews. There are good and 
bad in all races and the Jews are no exception to a general rule."

I told her also that if she lived in a certain section of the 
United States, that she would not sit at the same table with me, would not 
even allow me to sit beside her in the street car or in the railway coaches     
and that her mother would not give me room and board in her home.  
   
But my young German friend did not understand this at all. She 
  
           

87
was sure I was exaggerating the facts.  She could not believe that any
human being could object to another solely on account of the color of his 
skin.  If a race had all the vices and defects which she insisted were
characteristic of the Jew, she could understand why people would not want 
to come into close contact with such a group, but for the life of her she
could not comprehend why anybody would object to another human being, because 
he happened to be a few shades darker than himself.  It is always 
difficult for one prejudice-ridden human being to understand why his
brother should be obsessed by one which differs from his own.
My young German friend admired my type very much. She would often
pat my cheek and say " You are so beautifully dark and your hair curls so
prettily."
After steeping myself in German literature, music and the drama,
taking lessons every day from a most capable teacher and going to the opera
at night, I left Berlin for Italy one bitter, cold day, when the ground was 
white with snow.




Captain Church always welcomed me cordially to his beautiful home,
would pat me on the head affectionately, and usually filled my little arms
blocks her her path if she fits herself to do a certain thing, works with all
her might and main to do it and is given a chance.
out their own salvation.  I hope the efforts which I have made will convince
them that I have tried not only to work out my own salvation, but 
to help others in my group work out theirs.
I do not want to wage a holy war or any other kind of war upon
a group which is strong and powerful enough to circumscribe my activities
and prevent me from entering fields in which I should like to work.
I wish to insist upon this with all the emphasis which I can command.
No colored woman clothed in her right mind who has had as many genuine
friends in the dominant race as I have had and who has been given by
them as many opportunities to render the service which I have trie dto
give could be bitter toward the whole group.
being on this mundane sphere at all.  In a fit of despondency my dear mother
tried to end her life a few months before I was born.  By a miracle she was
saved, and I finally arrived on scheduled time none the worse for the pr
my future.
I distinguished myself as a baby by having no hair on my head for a 
time.  I was perfectly bald till I was more than a year old.  I have a picture of
myself taken in those days when my little head looked for all the world like a
billiard ball.  I have often wondered why my mother, who usually had such
excellent taste about everything, wanted to hand down to posterity such a 
headed baby as I was.  While I would hate to think that my mother was
ashamed of her baby, I am sure she did not take the same pride in exhibiting me
to her friends that she would have felt if my head had been covered by a reasonable
amount of hair.
But babies who are born under far more favorable conditions than those
which confronted me when I was ushered into the world do not have all of the
blessings of life showered upon them.  Bald-headed though I was, the fates were
kind to me in one particular at least.  I was born at a time when I did not have
to go through life as a slave.  My parents were not so fortunate, for they were
both slaves.  I am thankful that I was saved from a similar fate.
sort of way.  It was his custom to take me in his buggy to see Captain
Church SUnday mornings when I was four or five years old.  Captain Church
always welcomed me cordially to his beautiful home, would pat me on th
of the difficulties by which race prejudice blocks her path if she fits her
affectionately, and usually filled my little arms with fruit and achieve it

Chapter 1
My Parents
To Tell The Truth, I came very near 
not being on this mundane sphere at all.  In a fit of despondency my dear
mother tried to end her life a few months before I was born.  By a miracle
she was aved, and I finally arrived on scheduled time none the worse for
the prenatal experience which might have proved decidedly disagreeable,
if not fatal, to my future.
I distinguished myself a a baby by having no hair on my head for
a long time.  I was perfectly bald till I was more than a year old.  I have 
a picture of myself taken in those days when my little head looked for
all the world like a billiard ball.  I have often wondered why my mother,
who usually had such excellent taste about everything, wanted to hand
down to posterity such a bald-headed baby as I was.  While I would hate
to think that my mothed was ashamed of her baby, I am sure she did not
 take the same pride in exhibiting me to her friends that she would have
felt if my head had been covered by a reasonable amount of hair.
But babies who are born under far more favorable conditions than 
those which confronted me when I was ushered into the world do not
have all the blessings of life showered upon them.  Bald-headed though
I was, the fates were kind to me in one particular at least.  I was born
 at a time when I did not have to go through life as a slave.  My parents
were not so fortunate, for they were both slaves.  I am thankful that I
was saved from a similar fate.
I learned about my father's antecedents in a very matter of fact,
natural sort of way.  It was his custom to take me in his buggy to see
Captain C. B. Church Sunday mornings when I was four or five years old.
with fruit and achieve in spite of the difficulties by which race prejudice

88
Chapter 12  
I Leave Berlin. 

The parting between Herr von Devitz and myself affected us both 
considerably, I must confess. After the theatre party we occasionally met, 
sometimes going with Frau General von Wencketern, sometimes sightseeing 
and sometimes taking long walks together. He said he had never before been 
closely associated with a young women who had taken a college course and 
could discuss subjects pertaining to it with him. Through our mutual
Spanish friend there is no doubt that he had learned all about the race 
prejudice of which I was the victim in my own land. His admiration and his 
sympathy for me soon ripened into affection and he urged me to marry him. 

One day he asked me casually where my father lived and how I 
wrote such an address in English. Thinking he was prompted solely by curiosity 
in seeking this information I showed him how to write my father's address. 
About a week afterward he told me that he had written to my father 
telling him he had not told me how serious his intentions were and I upbraided 
him for having written to my father before getting my views on the 
subject. But he said no gentleman would pay serious attention to a young
woman without first gaining her father's consent. Since I had been reared 
in the United States and had always seen the young men win the girl, before 
they consulted her parents in the matter, I was not exactly prepared for 
this explanation and reply. 

I was very sorry Herr von Devitz had written to my father for 
several reasons. I knew my father's views on intermarriage and was certain 
that he would not consent, however much I might urge him to do so. Moreover,    
I feared he might insist upon having me come home immediately. But, 
knowing that I intended to leave Berlin in a short time, he did not even 
suggest that I come home, much to my delight. However, he wrote Herr von 
Devitz in no uncertain terms that he would never consent to his daughter's     
marrying a foreigner and living abroad. 

When I bade Herr von Devitz good bye at the station I knew full 
well that I would never see him again. If I had been white, I might have married 
him. I admired him very much. He was a man of high intellectual attainments, 
had lofty ideals, was good-looking, agreeable and seemed genuinely 
fond of me. But I had made up my mind definitely I would not marry a white 
man, if I lived in the United States, and I feared that I would not be 
happy as an exile living in a foreign land. 

89

While a student at Oberlin College my attention was first attracted
to the intermarriage of the races, when Frederick Douglass married Miss 
Helen Pitts, a white woman living in Anacostia, D. C. I used to go into the 
little reading room of Ladies Hall, where I boarded, so as to read the 
editorial comments of the newspapers and the magazines. I was then and 
there convinced that no sound argument could be adduced to prove that 
there is anything inherently wrong in the intermarriage of the races. I 
realized that a great hue and cry had been raised against it in this 
country, simply because it outraged custom and tradition. 

I was greatly surprised and pained at the attitude assumed by 
many colored people who criticized Mr. Douglass so savagely, because he had 
married a white woman. And these very people were continually clamoring 
for equality, "absolute equality along all lines, equality of opportunity, 
equality in the courts of law, educational, political, and social equality,"
world without end, Amen. And yet, when a representative of their race 
actually practices equality by choosing as his mate an individual classified 
as white, these very advocates of equality pounce down upon him     
hard and condemn him for practicing what they themselves have preached 
long and loud and more insistently than anybody else. 

While I have no patience with such people who assume this kind     
of an attitude, as soon as I read the comments made upon Mr. Douglass's 
marriage I decided that under no circumstances would I marry a white man 
in the United States. I have always felt very keenly the indignities heaped 
upon my race, ever since I realized how many and how big they are, and 
I knew I would be unhappy if I were the wife of a man belonging to the 
group which sanctioned these injustices and perpetrated these wrongs. 

Not including the blind musician three white men have proposed 
marriage to me. One of them was the Baron to whom I have already referred 
and the other two were Americans whom I met abroad. One of them was a 
student whom I saw frequently, because we were pursuing the same studies 
and were interested in the same things. He had no race prejudice whatever 
and had great strength of character. He said that he was eager to defy 
the customs and traditions of this country which ostracize everybody of 
African descent, no matter what their attainments or their virtues may be. 
But I was not willing to assist him in this effort, however worthy it might 
be. He thought I was a great coward, and told me so. 

The other American was a prosperous businessman to whom I was

90
introduced on the steamer, when I was returning home from Europe with my
father and family.  I told him that neither one of us would be happy
in the United States on account of the conditions which obtain in pract-
ically every section of the country.  But he answered these objections by
saying that we would go to Mexico where comparatively little race preju-
dice exists.  "You look like a Mexican anyhow," he argued, "and we would
have no trouble there about difference in race." 
     I have dwelt upon these episodes in my life at greater length than
I would ordinarily, because I wish to cite my case as proof of the fact
that some colored people are not so eager to marry white people as many in
that group suppose.  From private conversations with my white friends, and
I am glad to say that I have many of them, from the questions frequently asked
me when I have addressed Forums in the East and elsewhere, I am persuaded
that the average Caucasian in this country believes that there is nothing
which colored people desire so much as to marry into their group.  It seems
to me it is my duty to inform those who entertain this opinion that at
least one colored woman voluntarily rejected such a proposition three
times.
     On my way to Florentine from Berlin I had several experiences which
made the trip memorable, to say the least.  At one of the stations where I
had changed cars late in the afternoon I had gone into an apartment set
aside exclusively for women.  I was obliged to travel all night and I felt
perfectly safe taking an apartment for women.  I knew I could stretch out
on the long seat and have a good rest.  About two or three o'clock in the
morning I heard the door of the compartment open, and when I looked up half
asleep to see who it was who had entered.  I saw it was a man.  Then I heard
the guard slam the door and I realized that I was all alone in the compart-
ment with a stranger.  Since I knew it was against the rules to allow men to
enter a compartment at night, set aside exclusively for women, I felt
very uncomfortable indeed.
     As soon as the stranger started the conversation I knew that he
was German and he knew that I was American.  In replying to his question as 
to what I was doing in Europe, I told him I had come abroad to study and was
on my way to Florence where I intended to study Italian and visit the
wonderful art galleries there.  Although I was indignant at his intrusion
I tried to exercise sufficient control to conceal it.  I have travelled 
alone ever since I was a little girl, and I have talked with women who have
91
done the same thing, and I believe that, as a rule, if a woman deports her-
self correctly she need have no fear, or but little, that men whom she meets
on a journey will not do the same thing.  At any rate, this stranger, whose
presence in the compartment I resented so much, knew Florence by heart, ad-
vised me what to see, how to see it, and gave me some very valuable inform-
ation.
     Several times since then I have read about murders which were
committed in broad daylight in the compartments of England and Europe and
a shiver always run down my spinal column, when I think of the experience
I had en route to Florence.  How I was awakened at night, out of a sound
sleep, in a foreign land, finding myself confronted by a strange man and
knowing I was locked alone in a compartment with him on a train which was
speeding along in the dark.
     Still another incident fraught with  danger occurred on this
trip.  Baedeker's Guide Book advised those who wished to get an unusually
fine view of Genoa to arise very early in the morning and go to the top of
a certain church.  The directions were explicit and clear.  One had to ascend
the narrow, steep stairway in the back of the church and keep climbing till
she reached the spot from which the superb view could be seen.  The morning
after I reached Genoa I arose very early, full of enthusiasm, and made my
way to this church.
     I had climbed about half way up the steep, narrow stairway, when
I heard a noise behind me.  Turning around quickly I saw in the dark the
form of a man following me.  My heart beat fast, but there was nothing to
do but continue the ascent.  Come what might, I certainly could not turn
back.  When I reached the top of the stairway and stepped out on the tower,
I waited breathlessly to see who had been coming up behind me.  He was the
sexton of the church, and although he was evidently surprised to see a 
young woman all alone so early in the morning, he congratulated me upon
coming at the best time to get the view.
     After leaving the church the beautiful Mediterranean Sea beck-
oned me on.  It was the first time I had seen it and I wanted to dip my
hand into the water and gaze on it to my heart's content.  While I was
standing on the shore two men who had a small boat in which they rowed
strangers out to sea, asked me if I did not want to take a short ride.
After settling upon the price they would charge, I stepped into the boat


92

and was soon being rowed rapidly along. My mind was so occupied with the 
scene and the sentiment which it occasioned that the men had gone a long 
distance, before I had observed how far from shore we were. 

When I asked them to return, they did not comply at first and I 
had to insist several times that I did not want to row nay further, before 
they turned toward the shore. Some of my friends declared I ran a risk 
when I went alone with Italian boatmen and allowed them to row me so early 
in the morning, and such a long distance from the shore. And several of  
them have told me blood-curdling stories of robberies in which foreigners 
who allowed themselves to be taken alone at a distance from traffic, not 
only lost all they carried, but sometimes lost their lives. But at that 
time and for many years afterward I scarcely knew the meaning of fear.
There were few things I hesitated to do when I was in the twenties and 
thirties, simply because there was an element of danger in them. There are 
scores of things which I would not dare to do today that I undertook without 
fear when I was young. If I reached a city at midnight or after, it 
never occurred to me that there was the slightest danger in taking a conveyance 
and going to a hotel alone. After I grew older, however, I began 
to lose some of the fearlessness I formerly possessed. 

93

Chapter 13            In Florence. 

Before I had been in Florence six weeks I could not only make 
my wants known, but I could state in understandable Italian anything 
which I cared to express. I lived with an Italian widow who had a son 
about twelve years old who was the most, or one of the most, mischievous 
children imaginable. With my landlady and some of her friends I attended 
the Artist's Ball which was a gay and unique indeed. The costumes 
of some of the participants were bizarre, not to say risque, and the favors 
which were presented to the guests were grotesque and queer. 

In the treasure filled art galleries of Florence I literally 
entered a new world. Before the marvellous canvasses of the old masters 
I stood long hours without getting tired. I was greatly encouraged when 
I had learned the touch and characteristics of certain artists so well 
that I recognized their pictures as soon as I glanced at them.

I found an edition de luxe of George Eliot's Romola in two
volumes, bound in white and trimmed in red. Unmounted photographs of the 
places and the pictures mentioned by the author were pasted in the book 
opposite the pages in which they were described. It was a delightful experience 
to take this book, visit the places and look at the pictures to 
which George Eliot referred. 

The monasteries and the nunneries were a never-failing source of 
interest to me. I never tired seeing the monks themselves and the great 
stone structures in which they lived, moved and had their being. I acquired 
the habit of going into the beautiful, old Catholic churches several times 
a day. The architecture, the pictures and the very atmosphere of those 
grand old structures lifted me out of myself and filled me with noble aspirations, 
for a while at least. 

One morning about two o'clock while I was still in Florence, 
I received a cablegram from my father telling me he would leave Memphis on 
a certain date to take a steamer in New York and spend the summer with me 
in Europe. He brought his whole family with him, his wife, Robert who was 
four years old, and little Annette who was only two. I took charge of the 
little sister immediately and let Father do the honors for the small brother. 
I had mapped out a delightful itinerary of several months, not knowing 
the children would be members of the party. And it was surprising what a 
small portion of my program had to be revised or eliminated altogether 
   
  
  
 


94
and how much of it was carried out as originally planned, in spite of the
presence of two little children.
     We went to Heidelberg, not only to see that famous university and
the wonderful old castle but to take a package to the daughter of a neighbor 
who lived next door to us in Memphis for years and who belonged to
one of the old, aristocratic, slave-holding families of the South.  In the
palmy days of slavery, if anyone had told the father of this woman that
less than forty years from that day a man then held in slavery would be
taking a tour through Europe with his family and would be politely requested 
by his daughter to deliver a package to his granddaughter in Heidelberg,
Germany, he would either have laughed inordinately at the man who could
imagine such a preposterous situation, or he would have suggested that a
lunatic like that should be slapped into an asylum right away.
     Reams upon top of reams I might write if I tried to tell the innumerable 
acts of kindness performed for me by the people through whose
countries I travelled or among whom I lived.  The unpleasant incidents or 
those fraught with danger to which I have referred were the notable exceptions 
which proved the general rule.  Everywhere I went in Europe I received
a cordial welcome and made a host of friends.  My nerves were not on edge,
neither was my heart in my mouth, because I feared I would be persona non
grata to people I met abroad, if perchance they happened to discover I was
of African descent.
     I did not attempt to deceive deliberately these new friends concerning 
my racial identity.  To be sure, I did not wear a placard on my back
announcing in big black letters, "I am a colored woman from the United
States.  BEWARE!"  But, after our relations of friendship were close enough to
justify it, I told some of them belonging to the social circle in which I
moved that I had African blook in my veins.
     At what I considered the opportune time I always told the people
with whom I boarded how I am classified in the United States and interested 
them in the marvellous progress which we have made as a race.  I never
failed to reveal my racial identity to my foreign teachers who invariably
plied me with questions and manifested genuine interest in our group.  I
felt that I could not be loyal to my race, if I did not pursue this course.
     But now the time had come for me to return to my native land, and
my heart ached when I thought about it.  Life had been so pleasant and profitable



95
profitable abroad, where I could take advantage of every opportunity I desired
without wondering if a colored girl would be allowed to enjoy it or not,
and where I could secure accommodations in any hotel, boarding house or
private home in which I cared to live.  I knew that when I returned home I
would face again the humiliations, discriminations and the hardships to
which colored people are subjected all over the United States.
     Nevertheless, I loved the country in which I was born.  There was
no doubt about that, for I had had indisputable proof of that fact over
and over again.  Even though one's mother has been unkind to her at times,
one loves her just the same.  But the first time I realized I was genuinely,
deeply patriotic was when I saw the American flag in Berlin.
     I was walking on the street on which the American consulate was
located without knowing it and suddenly looked up to see my country's flag
proudly waving in the breeze.  Instantly my eyes grew moist and a big lump
came into my throat.  I had to exercise self control to suppress the tears.
"Truly this is patriotism," I said, "and I am patriotic, after all.  If my
rights were infringed upon over here in Germany, or if I got into trouble
of any kind," I soliloquized, "that flag would protect me just the same
as it would do if I were white."  "That is more than it would do for you
at home," and unpleasant little voice whispered.
     Then, involuntarily, I thought of the rights, privileges and immunities 
withheld from the colored people in the United States which practically 
everybody else is allowed to enjoy.  I thought how they are disfranchised 
in that section where the majority live, in spite of the 14th
and 15th amendments, while the whole country looks on in utter indifference 
at the flagrant violation of the constitution and thus by reprehensible 
silence and connivance, actually gives its consent.  The injustices
and discriminations of many kinds rushed through my mind like a flood.  I
thought of the many fine women and men, who, solely on account of their race,
are debarred from certain pursuits and vocations in which they would like
to engage, for which they are splendidly fitted by education and native
ability and in which they would achieve brilliant success, if they only had
a chance.
     Then I turned around and looked again at that flag waving over
the American Consulate in Berlin and for a minute I was transfixed to the
spot.  "It is my country," I said indignantly.  "I have a perfect right to 
love it and I will.  My African ancestors helped to build and enrich it with

96 

their unrequited labor for nearly 300 years, while they were shackled 
body and soul in the most cruel bondage the world has ever seen. My 
African ancestors suffered and died for it as slaves and they have fought, 
bled and died for it in every war which it has waged. It has been cruel 
to us in the past and it is often unjust to us now, but it is my country 
after all," I said aloud ,"and with all its faults I love it still."

The day I was to take the steamer for New York I saw one of my 
friends, a colored woman, who had married an Englishman who belonged to a 
good family and who was well to do. She had been living happily near 
London with a devoted hand and several children for years. Would such 
an existence appeal to me? i was perfectly sure it would not. I knew I 
would be much happier trying to promote the welfare of my race in my native 
land working under certain hard conditions, than I would be living in a 
foreign land where I could enjoy freedom from prejudice, but where I would 
make no effort to do the work which I believed it was my duty to do. I 
doubted that I could respect myself, if I shirked my responsibility and were 
recreant to my trust. After mature deliberation I decided then and there 
that I would be much happier living in the United States of America than 
I could be anywhere else on earth, so I was glad when the steamer began to 
plough the sea to bring me home. 

97 
Chapter 14 
I Return to the United States. 

After I landed in new York, I spent a few days with Mother and 
then we both went to Marietta, Ohio, where my brother, Thomas Ayers Church, 
had been attending college and was about to graduate. from the Commencement 
exercises Mother and Brother returned to New York and I proceeded to 
Memphis. But trying to get there was a thrilling experience sure enough. 

In purchasing my ticket from Marietta to Memphis I explained 
that I wanted a through sleeper, and the agent sold me both the railroad
ticket and the Pullman. I left Marietta at night and when I asked the 
porter to make up my berth after he had finished with several others, he 
said it would hardly be worth while for me to go to bed, because I would 
have to get off at Louisville, Kentucky, at midnight and wait till the next 
morning for the train to Memphis. I was very much surprised and agitated 
and insisted that I be allowed to remain on that sleeper, since my Pullman 
ticket entitled me to a berth from Marietta, Ohio, to Memphis, Tennessee. I 
was all the more wrought up, because I suspected that I was being ejected 
from the Pullman car on account of my race. I was well aware that it was 
most difficult for colored people to get reservations anywhere in the
South. Several of my personal friends had been ejected a short while previous 
to this incident, and one had been seriously injured by a mob which had pulled
him off the train. So I felt that my own doom had come. 

Then the conductor was called and he frankly admitted that my 
Pullman ticket did entitle me to a berth from Marietta to Memphis, but 
that the agent had sold me a Pullman ticket over one road and the railroad 
ticket over another. There was nothing for me to do, therefore, but 
get off at Louisville, remain there all night and take the train for 
Memphis over the route which my railroad ticket called for. If I did not 
care to do that, he said, I would have to buy another railroad ticket from 
Louisville to Memphis over the road on which my Pullman ticket had been 
sold. I was in great distress. I knew I could secure accommodations
at a hotel in Louisville. I did not care to ask anybody to take me in at 
midnight. It was before telephones could be conveniently used in such an 
emergency. I greatly preferred to buy another railroad ticket, so that I 
might continue my journey in my Pullman berth for which I had already 
paid. But I had brought only ten dollars with me, and that was not enough 
to get a railroad ticket from Louisville to Memphis. Hearing the conductor 
explain the situation to me several passengers came over to my berth to see     
     
 
      
      

98
if they could help me.
     When a gentleman who lived in Louisville heard me say that I
could not remain over night there, because I could not secure accommodat-
ions in a hotel there, he assured me that he would see to it that I got
a room in a good hotel.  Then a gentleman in a berth a few seats ahead of
me, who lived in Memphis and was well acquainted with my father, thought he
recognized me as his daughter and came up to ask my name.  When he heard
me say that I preferred to remain on that train, but did not have quite
enough money to buy my railroad ticket, he offered then and there to get
it for me, saying he knew it would be all right with my father and that he
would trust him for any amount.  It is a great pleasure for me to recall
how cheerfully and quickly those southern white people came to the aid of
a young colored woman in distress travelling alone.
     When the matter was investigated, it was discovered that the
agent in Marietta received a commission for the tickets sold over the
route on which he had sent me.  But that road did not have a through sleep-
er to Memphis.  So he deliberately sold me a Pullman ticket from Marietta
to Memphis, knowing that the railroad ticket called for a different route
and that I would be obliged to change cars in Louisville a few hours after
I boarded the train.  Such tricks are often played upon colored people
travelling through the South.  The railroad company wrote Father that the
agent had been discharged.
    Shortly after I returned from Europe, I received a letter from
Mr. Robert Heberton Terrell, urging me to come to Washington immediately to
notify Mr. George F.T. Cook, Superintendent of Colored Schools, that I
would resume my position as teacher in the High School.  I had secured a 
leave of absence for one year and then had had it renewed, but I had fail-
ed to notify the Superintendent when I would return.
My work in the school that year consisted mainly in teaching Latin and 
German.  At the end of the spring term the Senior class presented a play
in German which was creditable both to the pupils and the teacher.  A
gentleman who had lived in Germany a long time said he had never heard
pupils in an American school use the language better than mine did.  I
had taught them by what is now called the "Natural Method" which had not
been previously used in the school and the ability of my pupils both to
express themselves and to pronounce the language correctly surprised even
me.
 99
     I had urged the pupils in my class to get a book which I had seen
by chance in a book store and which taught them by easy methods to express
themselves in German without using English to translate the meaning of
the words.  Seeing this book used in my class room one day, a teacher who
had been long in the service asked me by what authority I had introduced
it into the schools, since it was not included in the curriculum.  I had not
intended to violate the rule, but it had never occurred to me to ask per-
mission to use anything in the class room which would help my pupils to
do their work well.  I was told, however, that this was considered quite a 
lawless thing for a teacher to do.
     Mr. Terrell came to see me regularly and was very attentive.  The
course of true love did not always run perfectly smooth, but it always
became calm and peaceful after any little turbulent eddies that caused it
to flow in the wrong direction, and we became engaged.  He was the head of
the Latin Department, as he had been during the first year I taught in
Washington, and I was his assistant.  In explaining my decision to link
my destiny with his I used to say that I enjoyed assisting him in the
Latin Department so much, I made up my mind to assist him in all depart-
ments for the rest of my natural life.  And this I certainly tried to do.
     Mr. Terrell and I were very remote and circumspect during school
hours.  Occasionally, however, some of our pupils would see us attending a 
meeting or walking on the street together, so that it soon became known
that we were quite interested in each other and they enjoyed our romance
immensely.  Now and then when I entered the recitation room, I would see
something like this written on the blackboard; "Mr. Terrell is getting so
good.  He used to go to dances, but now he goes to church."  My maiden name
lent itself admirably to puns and there were many of them, of course.  Once
in a while a boy or girl would rush into my room a few minutes before
school opened, as through some important business had to transacted in a 
hurry and say, "Oh, excurse me, Miss. Church, Mr. Terrell isn't here , is
he?"  Meanwhile the pupil would be looking around the room, as though he
were so surprised and disappointed at not finding the teacher there, that
he could scarcely believe his eyes.
     Several months before the summer vacation began I received a 
letter from Mrs. A.A.F. Johnston, the Dean of Women, inviting me to become
Registrar of Oberlin College.  I wondered if the letter was genuine, when
           

100
I read it. I had never dreamed of securing such a position in an institution
of Oberlin's standing. It had never occurred to me that any colored
woman, however great her attainments might be, would be considered in the
search for officers or instructors in a college for white youth in the
United States.
    Although I had promised definitely to marry the following
October, it was a great temptation to postpone my wedding and go to Oberlin
as registrar. I thought seriously about the matter, reviewing the arguments
pro and con, over and over again. There were many reasons why I wanted to
accept the position. But, after mature deliberation and much agony of soul,
I decided not to change my plans. Among other things it seemed to me that
I would be taking the position under false pretences, if I knew when I accepted
it, I would keep it only a year, for I did not think it would be
right to postpone my wedding longer than that. Under the circumstances I
feared it might not be dealing honorably by Oberlin College, if I promised
to go.
    The day I wrote Mrs. Johnston declining the position I was 
very unhappy indeed. If I had accepted I would have been a member of the
faculty of Oberlin College, for Mrs. Johnston had definitely stated that in 
her letter.
    It is quite possible that I made a mistake in not becoming
registrar of an institution which was attended mainly by white students
and in which each member of the faculty was white. It may have been my duty
to establish such a precedent in a white college of Oberlin's standing as
that undoubtedly would have been. It might have encouraged other institutions
to recognize their colored alumnae. If I acted unwisely, I am sorry,
although regrets do no good now. But, in declining to become registrar of
Oberlin College, whether I made a mistake or not, I certainly deprived myself
of the distinction and honor of being the first and only colored
woman in the United States to whom such a position has ever been offered,
so far as I am able to ascertain.
     During the summer before my marriage I remained in New York
with my mother, getting my trousseau for which my father gave me the money.
My wedding dress was white faille silk trimmed with a white chiffon embroidered
scalloped edging instead of lace. There was a wide flounce of it
across the bottom of the front gore and a narrower width formed a bertha
on the long-sleeved waist. The dress second in importance to the wedding

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