Page:The American Magazine volume LXIV.djvu/18

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North. "The South," he said, "is getting to be too dangerous for colored people." His language and pronunciation were surprisingly good. I found that he was a college student, and that he expected to study for the ministry.

"Do you talk much about these things among yourselves?" I asked:

"We don't talk about much else," he said. "It's sort of life and death with us."

Another curious thing happened not long afterwards. I was lunching with several fine Southern men, and they talked, as usual, with the greatest freedom in the full hearing of the Negro waiters. Somehow, I could not help watching to see if the Negroes took any notice of what was said. I wondered if they were sensitive. Finally, I put the question to one of my friends:

"Oh," he said, "we never mind them; they don't care."

One of the waiters instantly spoke up:

"No, don't mind me; I'm only a block of wood."

I set out from the hotel on the morning of my arrival to trace the color line as it appeared, outwardly, in the life of such a town.

Atlanta is a singularly attractive place, as bright and new as any Western city. Sherman left it in ashes at the close of the war; the old buildings and narrow streets were swept away and a new city was built, which is now growing in a manner not short of astonishing. It has. 115,000 to 125,000 inhabitants, about a third of whom are Negroes, living in more or less detached quarters in various parts of the city, and giving an individuality to the life interesting enough to the unfamiliar Northerner. A great many of them are always on the streets, far better dressed and better-appearing than I had expected to see—having in mind, perhaps, the tattered country specimens of the penny postal cards. Crowds of Negroes were at work mending the pavement, for the Italian and Slav have not yet appeared in Atlanta, nor indeed to any extent anywhere in the South, I stopped to watch a group of them. A good deal of conversation was going on, here and there a Negro would laugh with great good humor, and several times I heard a snatch of a song: much jollier workers than our grim foreigners, but evidently not working so hard. A fire had