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Me1.xml
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
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<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" xml:id="Me1">
<teiHeader>
<fileDesc>
<titleStmt>
<title>Me: A Book of Remembrance (Part 1)</title>
<respStmt>
<resp>Transcriber</resp>
<name ref="pers:LW1">Leean Wu</name>
</respStmt>
<respStmt>
<resp>Transcriber</resp>
<name ref="pers:HR1">Heidi Rennert</name>
</respStmt>
<respStmt>
<resp>Proofreader</resp>
<name ref="pers:LW1">Leean Wu</name>
</respStmt>
<respStmt>
<resp>Encoder</resp>
<name ref="pers:LW1">Leean Wu</name>
</respStmt>
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<p>Publication Information</p>
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<msItem>
<bibl xml:id="bibl82"><author><name ref="pers:WE1">Anonymous</name></author>.
<title level="m">Me: A Book of Remembrance [Part One]</title>. <publisher
ref="org:Century"><title level="j">Century Illustrated Monthly
Magazine</title></publisher>. <date when="1915-04">Apr. 1915</date>,
pp. <biblScope unit="page">801-827</biblScope>.</bibl>
</msItem>
</msContents>
<additional>
<adminInfo>
<availability>
<p>Facsimile retrieved from HathiTrust</p>
</availability>
</adminInfo>
<surrogates>
<!--Add other editions of this text using a bibl element with a target pointing to its bibl-->
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<revisionDesc status="published">
<change who="pers:SL1" when="2024-01-27" status="published">Encoded chapter headings and added trailer at end.</change>
<change who="pers:LW1" when="2024-01-26" status="published">Corrected typos. Updated treatment of slurs. N-slur is now typed as is in the original text with an editorial note to see the <q>note on language</q> page on the website.</change>
<change who="pers:JT1" when="2023-11-23" status="published">Added citation from
bibliography.xml to <gi>sourceDesc</gi> using utilities/msdesc.xsl.</change>
<change who="pers:LW1" when="2022-08-09" status="published">Standardized the em
dashes.</change>
<change who="pers:LW1" when="2022-08-09" status="published">Slurs have been discussed with
Joey and Sydney and encoded as advised. N-word redacted as n[---] and <q>negro</q> not
redacted but added editorial note based on Oxford English Dictionary. These may be
subject to change as we decide how to most respectfully navigate reproductions of
racially offensive language.</change>
<change who="pers:LW1" when="2022-08-06" status="inProgress">Proofed and encoded. Slurs not
yet coded. Note for list -- used type instead of rend because rend would not
work.</change>
<change who="pers:LW1" when="2022-08-06" status="inProgress">Downloaded document from
Google Drive and converted to TEI.</change>
<change who="pers:JT1" when="2020-08-15" status="empty">Removed primary source people from
<gi>respStmt</gi> using XSLT.</change>
<change who="pers:MC1" status="empty" when="2020-08-02">Changed title.</change>
<change who="pers:MC1" status="empty" when="2020-07-03">Added note about source.</change>
<change who="pers:SL1" status="empty" when="2019-07-05">Added facs and readied for
proof.</change>
<change who="pers:JT1" status="empty" when="2019-04-11">Created file from bibliography
entry bibl82 using XSLT.</change>
</revisionDesc>
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<text facs="facs:Me1" next="doc:Me2">
<pb n="801"/>
<body>
<head>Me: A Book of Remembrance</head>
<opener>
<byline><emph>This instalment includes themes and depictions of racial slurs, racism,
internalized racism, sexual harrassment, sexual assault, victim blaming, and
attempted sexual assault.</emph></byline>
</opener>
<div type="content">
<p>The writing of this book seems to me one of the most astounding literary feats I have
ever known. It is one hundred thousand words long; it was started on Thanksgiving day
and finished before New Year’s. The actual writing occupied two weeks, the revision
another two. The reason for this amazing celebrity lies in the fact that it is pure
reporting; the author has not branched out into any byways of style, but has merely
told in the simplest language possible what she actually remembered. These are the
circumstances in which the book was undertaken.</p>
<p>The author had wrenched from her feverishly busy life to undergo an operation in a
hospital; four days later she began the writing of this book. I will quote her own
words: <q>It seems to me as though these two weeks I have just passed in the hospital
have been the first time in thirteen years in which I have had a chance to think.
As I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling, the events of my girlhood came
before me, rushed back with such overwhelming vividness that I picked up a pencil
and began to write</q>.</p>
<p>I cannot imagine just what the general reader’s attitude toward this work will be. I
myself, reading it in the light of the knowledge I possess of the life of the author,
look upon it not only as an intensely interesting human document, but as a suggestive
sociological study. It is an illuminative picture of what may befall a working-girl
who, at the age of seventeen, gaily ventures forth to conquer life with ten dollars
in her pocket. You may object that many of her difficulties were brought about
through her own initiative; that she ran to meet them open-armed. This is, no doubt,
true, but you must consider her ignorance and her temperament. It was her naïveté and
generosity and kindly impulses that left her unarmed. She was unique in many
respects–in her peculiar heredity, her extreme ability, her uncanny charm, and her
total unacquaintedness with the world.</p>
<p>I have known the author for a number of years, and I know that what she says is true,
though the names of people and places have necessarily been changed in order to hide
their identity. The author has written a number of books that have had a wide
circulation. The aspirations of the little girl of seventeen with the suitcase full
of poetry have been realized!</p>
<p>JEAN WEBSTER.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>It was a cold, blizzardy day in the month of March when I left Quebec, and my
weeping, shivering relatives made an anxious, melancholy group about my departing
train. I myself cried a bit, with my face pressed against the window; but I was
seventeen, my heart was light, and I had not been happy at home.</p>
<p>My father was an artist, and we were very poor. My mother had been a tight-rope
dancer in her early youth. She was an excitable, temperamental creature from whose
life all romance had been squeezed by the torturing experience of bearing sixteen
children. Moreover, she was a native of a far-distant land, and I do not <pb n="802"
/> think she ever got over the feeling of being a stranger in Canada.</p>
<p>Time was when my father, a young and ardent adventurer (an English-Irishman) had
wandered far and wide over the face of the earth. The son of rich parents, he had
sojourned in China and Japan and India in the days when few white men ventured into
the Orient. But that was long ago.</p>
<p>This story is frankly of myself, and I mention these few facts merely in the
possibility of their proving of some psychological interest later; also they may
explain why it was possible for a parent to allow a young girl of seventeen to leave
her home with exactly ten dollars in her purse (I do not think my father knew just
how much money I did have) to start upon a voyage to the West Indies!</p>
<p>In any event, the fact remains that I had overruled my father’s weak and
absent-minded objections and my mother’s exclamatory ones, and I had accepted a
position in Jamaica, West Indies, to work for a little local newspaper called <q>The
Lantern</q>.</p>
<p>It all came about through my having written at the age of sixteen a crude, but
exciting, story which a kindly friend, the editor of a Quebec weekly paper, actually
accepted and published.</p>
<p>I had always secretly believed there were the strains of genius somewhere hidden in
me; I had always lived in a little dream world of my own, wherein, beautiful and
courted, I moved among the elect of the earth. Now I had given vivid proof of some
unusual power! I walked on air. The world was rose-colored; nay, it was golden.</p>
<p>With my story in my hand, I went to the office of a family friend. I had expected to
be smiled upon and approved, but also lectured and advised. My friend, however,
regarded me speculatively.</p>
<p><q>I wonder</q>, said he, <q>whether <emph>you</emph> couldn’t take the place of a
girl out in Jamaica who is anxious to return to Canada, but is under contract to
remain there for three years</q>.</p>
<p>The West Indies! I <emph>had</emph> heard of the land somewhere, probably in my
school geography. I think it was associated in my mind in some way with the
fairy-stories I read. Nevertheless, with the alacrity and assurance of youth I cried
out that <emph>of course</emph> I would go.</p>
<p> <q>It’s a long way off</q>, said my friend, dubiously, <q>and you are very
young</q>.</p>
<p>I assured him earnestly that I should grow, and as for the distance, I airily
dismissed that objection as something too trivial to consider. Was I not the daughter
of a man who had been back and forth to China no fewer than eighteen times, and that
during the perilous period of the Tai-ping Rebellion? Had not my father made journeys
from the Orient in the old-fashioned sailing-vessels, being at sea a hundred-odd days
at a time? What could not his daughters do?</p>
<p>Whatever impression I made upon this agent of the West Indian newspaper must have
been fairly good, for he said he would write immediately to Mr. Campbell, the owner
of <q>The Lantern</q>, who, by the way, was also a Canadian, and recommend me.</p>
<p>I am not much of a hand at keeping secrets, but I did not tell my parents. I had been
studying shorthand for some time, and now I plunged into that harder than ever, for
the position was one in which I could utilize stenography.</p>
<p>It was less than two weeks later when our friend came to the house to report that the
West Indian editor had cabled for me to be sent at once.</p>
<p>I was the fifth girl in our family to leave home. I suppose my father and mother had
become sadly accustomed to the departing of the older children to try their fortunes
in more promising cities than Quebec; but I was the first to leave home for a land as
distant as the West Indies, though two of my sisters had gone to the United States.
Still, there remained a hungry, crushing brood of little ones younger than I. With
what fierce joy did I not now look forward to getting away at last from the same
noisy, tormenting brood, for whom it had been my particular and detested task to
care! So my father <pb n="803"/> and mother put no obstacle in the way of my going. I
remember passionately threatening to <q>run away</q> if they did.</p>
<p>My clothes were thick and woolen. I wore a red knitted toque with a tassel that
wagged against my cheek. My coat was rough and hopelessly Canadian. My dress a
shapeless bag belted in at the waist. I was not beautiful to look at, but I had a
bright, eager face, black and shining eyes, and black and shining hair. My cheeks
were as red as a Canadian apple. I was a little thing, and, like my mother,
foreign-looking. I think I had the most acute, inquiring, and eager mind of any girl
of my age in the world.</p>
<p>A man on the train who had promised my father to see me as far as my boat did so.
When we arrived in New York he took me there in a carriage—the first carriage in
which I had ever ridden in my life!</p>
<p>I had a letter to the captain, in whose special charge I was to be, that my Jamaica
employer had written. So I climbed on board the <emph>Atlas</emph>. It was about six
in the morning, and there were not many people about—just a few sailors washing the
decks. I saw, however, a round-faced man in a white cap, who smiled at me broadly. I
decided that he was the captain. So I went up to him and presented my letter,
addressing him as <q>Captain Hollowell</q>. He held his sides and laughed at me, and
another man—this one was young and blond and very good-looking; at least so he seemed
to the eyes of seventeen—came over to inquire the cause of the merriment. Greatly to
my mortification, I learned from the new arrival that the man I had spoken to was not
the captain, but the cook. He himself was Mr. Marsden, the purser, and he was
prepared to take care of me until Captain Hollowell arrived.</p>
<p>The boat would not sail for two hours, so I told Mr. Marsden that I guess I’d take a
walk in New York. He advised me strenuously not to, saying that I might <q>get
lost</q>. I scorned his suggestion. What, <emph>I</emph> get lost? I laughed at
the idea. So I went for my <q>walk in New York</q>.</p>
<p>I kept to one street, the one at the end of which my boat lay. It was an ugly, dirty,
noisy street,—noisy even at that early hour,—for horrible-looking trucks rattled over
the cobblestoned road, and there were scores of people hurrying in every direction.
Of the streets of New York I had heard strange, wonderful, and beautiful tales; but
as I trotted along, I confess I was deeply disappointed and astonished. I think I was
on Canal Street, or another of the streets of lower New York.</p>
<p>I was not going to leave the United States, however, without dropping a bit of my ten
dollars behind me. So I found a store, in which I bought some post-cards, a lace
collar, and some ribbon—pink. When I returned to the boat I possessed, instead of ten
dollars, just seven. However, this seemed a considerable sum to me, and I assured
myself that on the boat itself, of course, one could not spend money .</p>
<p>I was standing by the rail watching the crowds on the wharf below. Every one on board
was saying good-by to some one else, and people were waving and calling to one
another. Everybody seemed happy and excited and gay. I felt suddenly very little and
forlorn. I alone had no one to bid me good-by, to wave to me, and to bring me
flowers. I deeply pitied myself, and I suppose my eyes were full of tears when I
turned away from the rail as the boat pulled out.</p>
<p>The blond young purser was watching me, and now he came up cheerfully and began to
talk, pointing out things to me in the harbor as the boat moved along. He had such
nice blue eyes and shining white teeth, and his smile was quite the most winning that
I had ever seen. Moreover, he wore a most attractive uniform. I forgot my temporary
woes. He brought me his <q>own special</q> deck chair,—at least he said it was
his,—and as soon as I was comfortably ensconced in it, my feet wrapped about with a
warm rug produced from somewhere—also his. I felt a sense of being under his personal
charge. A good part of the morning he managed to remain <pb n="804"/> near me, and
when he did go off among the other passengers, he took the trouble to explain to me
that it was to attend to his duties.</p>
<p>I decided that he must have fallen in love with me. The thought delightfully warmed
me. True, nobody had ever been in love with me before. I was the Ugly Duckling of an
otherwise astonishingly good-looking family. Still, I was sure I recognized the true
signs of love (had I not in dreams and fancies already been the heroine in a hundred
princely romances?), and I forthwith began to wonder what life as the wife of a
sailor might be like.</p>
<p>At dinner-time, however, he delivered me, with one of his charming smiles, to a
portly and important personage who proved to be the real captain. My place at table
was to be at his right side. He was a red-faced, jovial, mighty-voiced Scotchman. He
called me a <q>puir little lassie</q> as soon as he looked at me. He explained that
my West Indian employer (also a Scotch-Canadian) was his particular friend, and that
he had promised to take personal care of me upon the voyage. He hoped Marsden, in his
place, had looked after me properly, as he had been especially assigned by him to do.
I, with a stifling lump of hurt vanity and pride in my throat, admitted that he
had.</p>
<p>Then he was <emph>not</emph> in love with me, after all!</p>
<p>I felt cruelly unhappy as I stole out on deck after dinner. I disdained to look for
that special deck chair my sailor had said I could have all for my own, and instead I
sat down in the first one at hand.</p>
<p>Ugh! <choice>
<sic>how</sic>
<corr>How</corr>
</choice> miserable I felt! I supposed, said I to myself, that it was I who had been
the one to fall in love, fool that I was! But I had no idea one felt so wretched even
when in love. Besides, with all my warm Canadian clothes, I felt chilly and
shivery.</p>
<p>A hateful, sharp-nosed little man came poking around me. He looked at me with his
eyes snapping, and coughed and rumbled in his throat as if getting ready to say
something disagreeable to me. I turned my back toward him, pulled the rug about my
feet, closed my eyes, and pretended to go to sleep. Then he said:</p>
<p><q>Say, excuse me, but you’ve got my chair and rug</q>.</p>
<p>I sat up. I was about to retort that <q>first come, first served</q> should be the
rule, when out on deck came my friend Marsden. In a twinkling he appeared to take in
the situation, for he strode quickly over to me, and, much to my indignation, took me
by the arm and helped me to rise, saying that my chair was <q>over here</q>.</p>
<p>I was about to reply in as haughty and rebuking a tone as I could command when I was
suddenly seized with a most frightful surge of nausea. With my good-looking blond
sailor still holding me by the arm, and murmuring something that sounded both
laughing and soothing. I fled over to the side of the boat.</p>
<p><milestone unit="sectionBreak"/></p>
</div>
<div>
<head>II</head>
<p>For four days I never left my state-room. <q>A sea-voyage is an inch of hell</q>,
says an old proverb of my mother’s land, and to this proverb I most heartily
assented.</p>
<p>An American girl occupied the <q>bunk</q> over mine, and shared with me the
diminutive state-room. She was even sicker than I, and being sisters in great misery,
a sweet sympathy grew up between us, so that under her direction I chewed and sucked
on the sourest of lemons, and under mine she swallowed lumps of ice, a suggestion
made by my father.</p>
<p>On the second day I had recovered somewhat, and so was able to wait upon and assist
her a bit. Also, I found in her a patient and silent listener (Heaven knows she could
not be otherwise, penned up as she was in that narrow bunk), and I told her all about
the glorious plans and schemes I had made for my famous future; also I brought forth
from my bag numerous poems and stories, and these I poured into her deaf ears in a
voluble stream as she lay shaking and moaning in her bunk.</p>
<pb n="805"/>
<p>It had been growing steadily warmer so warm, indeed, that I felt about the room to
ascertain whether there were some heating-pipes running through it.</p>
<p>On the fourth day my new friend sat up in her bunk and passionately went <q>on
strike</q>. She said:</p>
<p><q>Say, I wish you’d quit reading me all that stuff. I know it ‘s lovely, but I’ve
got a headache, and honestly I can’t for the life of me take an interest in your
poems and stories</q>.</p>
<p>Deeply hurt, I folded my manuscripts. She leaned out of her berth and caught at my
arm.</p>
<p><q>Don’t be angry</q>, she said. <q>I didn’t mean to hurt you</q>.</p>
<p>I retorted with dignity that I was not in the slightest degree hurt. Also I quoted a
proverb about casting one’s pearls before swine, which sent her into such a peal of
laughter that I think it effectually cured her of her lingering remnants of
seasickness. She jumped out of her bunk, squeezed me about the waist, and said:</p>
<p><q>You’re the funniest girl I’ve ever met—a whole vaudeville act</q>. She added,
however, that she liked me, and as she had her arm about me, I came down from my high
horse, and averred that her affection was reciprocated. She then told me her name and
learned mine. She was book-keeper in a large department store. Her health had been
bad, and she had been saving for a long time for this trip to the West Indies.</p>
<p>We decided that we were now well enough to go on deck. As I dressed, I saw her
watching me with a rather wondering and curious expression. My navy-blue serge dress
was new, and although it was a shapeless article, the color at least was becoming,
and with the collar purchased in New York, I felt that I looked very well. I asked
her what she thought of my dress. She said evasively:</p>
<p><q>Did you make it yourself?</q></p>
<p>I said:</p>
<p><q>No; mama did</q>.</p>
<p><q>Oh</q>, said she.</p>
<p>I didn’t just like the sound of that <q>Oh</q>, so I asked her aggressively if she
didn’t think my dress was nice. She answered:</p>
<p><q>I think you’ve got the prettiest hair of any girl I ever knew</q>.</p>
<p>My hair <emph>did</emph> look attractive, and I was otherwise quite satisfied with my
appearance. What is more, I was too polite to let her know what I thought of
<emph>her</emph> appearance. Although it was March, she, poor thing, had put on a
flimsy little muslin dress. Of course it was suffocatingly hot in our close little
state-room, but, still, that seemed an absurd dress to wear on a boat. I offered to
lend her a knitted woolen scarf that mama had made me to throw over her shoulders,
but she shook her head, and we went up on deck.</p>
<p>To my unutterable surprise, I found a metamorphosis had taken place on deck during my
four days’ absence. Every one appeared to be dressed in thin white clothes; even the
officers were all in white duck. Moreover, the very atmosphere had changed. It was as
warm and sultry as midsummer, and people were sipping iced drinks and fanning
themselves</p>
<p>Slowly it dawned upon me that we were sailing toward a tropical land. In a hazy sort
of way I had known that the West Indies was a warm country, but I had not given the
matter much thought. My father, who had been all over the world, had left my
outfitting to mama and me (we had so little with which to buy the few extra things
mama, who was more of a child than I, got me!), and I had come away with clothes fit
for a land which often registered as low as twenty-four degrees below zero!</p>
<p>My clothes scorched me; so did my burning shame. I felt that every one’s eyes were
bent upon me.</p>
<p>Both Captain Hollowell and Mr. Marsden greeted me cordially, expressing delight at
seeing me again, but although the captain said (in a big, booming voice that every
one on deck could hear) that I looked like a nice, blooming peony, I sensitively
fancied I detected a laugh beneath his words.</p>
<p>Tragedies should be measured according to their effects. Trifles prick us in <pb
n="806"/> youth as sharply as the things that ought to count. I sensitively
suffered in my pride as much from the humiliation of wearing my heavy woolen clothes
as physically did from the burden of their weight and heat. I was sure that I
presented a ridiculous and hideous spectacle. I felt that every one was laughing at
me. It was insufferable; it was torture.</p>
<p>As soon as I could get away from that joking captain, who <emph>would</emph> keep
patting me on the head, and that purser, who was always smiling and showing his white
teeth, I ran down to my room, which I had hoped to see as little of as possible for
the rest of the voyage.</p>
<p>I sat down on the only chair and began to cry. The ugly little room, with its one
miserable window, seemed a wretched intolerable prison. I could hear the sough- ing
of the waves outside, and a wide streak of blue sky was visible through my port-hole
window. The moving of the boat and the thud of the machinery brought home to me
strongly the fact that I was being carried resistlessly farther and farther away from
the only home I had ever known, and which, alas! I had yearned to leave.</p>
<p>It was unbearably hot, and I took off my woolen dress. I felt that I would never go
on deck again; yet how was I going to endure it down here in this little hole? I was
thinking miserably about that when my room-mate came back.</p>
<p><q>Well, here you are!</q> she exclaimed. <q>I’ve been looking for you everywhere!
Now what’s the matter?</q></p>
<p><q>N-nothing</q>, I said; but despite myself the sob would come.</p>
<p><q>You poor kid!</q> she said. <q>I know what’s the matter with you. I don’t know
what your folks were thinking of when they sent you off to the West Indies in
Canadian clothes. Are they all as simple as you there? But now don’t you worry.
Here, I’ve got six pretty nice-looking shirt-waists, besides my dresses, and
you’re welcome to any of them you want. You’re just about my size. I’m
thirty-four</q>.</p>
<p><q>Thirty-four!</q> I exclaimed, astonished even in the midst of my grief. <q>Why, I
thought you were only about twenty</q>.</p>
<p><q>Bust! Bust!</q> she cried, laughing, and got her waists out and told me to try
them on. I gave her a kiss, a big one, I was so delighted; but I insisted that I
could not borrow her waists. I would, however, buy some of them if she would sell
them.</p>
<p>She said that was all right, and she sold me three of them at a dollar-fifty each.
They fitted me finely. I never felt happier in my life than when I put on one of
those American-made shirt-waists. They were made sailor-fashion, with wide turnover
collars and elbow sleeves; with a red silk tie in front, and with my blue cloth
skirt, I really did look astonishingly nice, and, anyway, cool and neat. The fact
that I now possessed only two dollars and fifty cents in the world gave me not the
slightest worry, and when I ran out of my room, humming, and up the stairs and bang
into the arms of Captain Hollowell, he did not say this time that I looked like a
peony, but that, <q>By George! I looked like a nice Canadian rose</q>.</p>
<p><milestone unit="sectionBreak"/></p>
</div>
<div>
<head>III</head>
<p><q>Do you know</q>, said my room-mate on the night before we reached Jamaica, <q>that
that four-fifty you paid me for those waists just about covers my tips</q>.</p>
<p><q>Tips?</q> I repeated innocently. <q>What are tips?</q></p>
<p>She gave me a long, amazed look, her mouth wide-open.</p>
<p><q>Good heavens!</q> at last she said, <q>where <emph>have</emph> you lived all of
your life?</q></p>
<p><q>In Quebec</q>. I said honestly.</p>
<p><q>And you never heard of tips—people giving tips to waiters and servants?</q></p>
<p>I grew uncomfortably red under her amused and amazed glance. In the seven days of
that voyage my own extraordinary ignorance had been daily brought home to me. I now
said lamely:</p>
<p><q>Well, we had only one servant that I can ever remember, a woman named <pb n="807"
/> Sung-Sung whom papa brought from China; but she was more like one of our
family, a sort of slave. We never gave her tips, or whatever you call it</q>.</p>
<p>Did I not know, pursued my American friend, that people gave extra money—that is,
<q>tips</q>—to waiters at restaurants and hotels when they got through eating a
meal?</p>
<p>I told her crossly and truthfully that I had never been in a hotel or restaurant in
all my life. She threw up her hands, and pronounced me a vast object of pity. She
then fully enlightened me as to the exact meaning of the word <q>tips</q>, and left
me to calculate painfully upon a bit of paper the division of two dollars and fifty
cents among five people; to wit, stewardesses, cabin boys, waiters, etc.</p>
<p>I didn’t tell her that that was the last of my money—that two-fifty. However, I did
not expend any thought upon the subject of what was to become of me when I arrived in
Jamaica <emph>sans</emph> a single cent.</p>
<p>We brought our bags and belongings out on deck before the boat docked next day. Every
one was crowded against the rails, watching the approaching land.</p>
<p>A crowd seemed to be swarming on the wharves, awaiting our boat. As we came nearer, I
was amazed to find that this crowd was made up almost entirely of negroes. <note
type="editorial" resp="pers:LW1">This term was <q>the standard designation
throughout the 17th to 19th centuries</q> to refer to Black people when this
text was published in 1915 (<title level="j">Oxford English Dictionary</title>).
It is now considered outdated and even offensive but is sometimes still used in
historical contexts and organizations (<title level="j">Oxford English
Dictionary</title>).</note> We have few negroes in Canada, and I had seen only
one in all my life. remember an older sister had shown him to me in church—he was
pure black—and told me he was the <q>Bogy man</q>, and that he’d probably come around
to see me that night. I was six. I never took my eyes once from his face during the
service, and I have never forgotten that face.</p>
<p>It was, therefore, with a genuine thrill of excitement and fear that I looked down
upon that vast sea of upturned black and brown faces. Never will I forget that first
impression of Jamaica. Everywhere I looked were negroes—men and women and children,
some half naked, some with bright handkerchiefs knotted about their heads, some
gaudily attired, some dressed in immaculate white duck, just like the people on the
boat.</p>
<p>People were saying good-by, and many had already gone down the gang-plank. Several
women asked me for my address, and said they did not want to lose me. I told them I
did not know just where I was going. I expected Mr. Campbell to meet me.</p>
<p>As Mr. Campbell had not come on board, however, and as Captain Hollowell and Mr.
Marsden seemed to have forgotten my existence in the great rush of arrival, I, too,
at last descended the gang-plank. I found myself one of that miscellaneous throng of
colored and white people.</p>
<p>A number of white men and women were hurrying about meeting and welcoming expected
passengers, who were soon disposed of in various vehicles. Soon not one of the boat’s
passengers remained, even my room-mate being one of a party that climbed aboard a bus
marked, <q>The Crystal Springs Hotel</q>.</p>
<p>I was alone on that Jamaica wharf, and no one had come to claim me!</p>
<p>It was getting toward evening, and the sky in the west was as red as blood. I sat
down on my bag and waited. Most of the people left on the dock were laborers who were
engaged in unloading the ship’s cargo. Women with heavy loads on their heads, their
hands on their shaking hips, and chattering in a high singsong dialect (I didn’t
recognize it for English at first!), passed me. Some of them looked at me curiously,
and one, a terrifying, pockmarked crone said something to me that I could not
understand.</p>
<p>I saw the sun slipping down in the sky, but it was still as bright and clear as
midday. Sitting alone on that Jamaica wharf, I scarcely saw the shadows deepening as
I looked out across the Caribbean Sea, which shone like a jewel under the fading
light. I forgot my surroundings and my anxiety at the failure of my employer to meet
me; I felt no fear, just a vague sort of enchantment and interest in this new land I
had discovered.</p>
<p>But I started up screaming when I felt a hand on my shoulder, and looking up in the
steadily deepening twilight, I saw a <pb n="808"/> smiling face approach my own, and
the face was black!</p>
<p>I fled toward the boat, crying out wildy:</p>
<p><q>Captain Hollowell! O Captain Hollowell!</q></p>
<p>I left my little bag behind me. Fear lent wings to my feet, and I kept crying out to
Captain Hollowell as I ran up that gang-plank, mercifully still down. At the end of
it was my dear blond purser, and right into his arms unhesitatingly I ran. He kept
saying: <q>Well! well! well!</q> and he took me to Captain Hollowell, who swore
dreadfully when he learned that Mr. Campbell had not met me. Then my purser went to
the dock wharf to get my bag, and to <q>skin the hide off that damned black
baboon</q> who had frightened me.</p>
<p>I ate dinner with Captain Hollowell and the officers of the <emph>Atlas</emph> that
night, the last remaining passenger on the boat. After dinner, accompanied by the
captain and the purser, I was taken by carriage to the office of <q>The
Lantern</q>.</p>
<p>I don’t know what Captain Hollowell said to Mr. Campbell before I was finally called
in, for I had been left in the outer office. Their voices were loud and angry, and I
thought they were quarreling. I devoutly hoped it was not over me. I was tired and
sleepy. In fact, when Captain Hollowell motioned to me to come in, I remember rubbing
my eyes, and he put his arm about me and told me not to cry.</p>
<p>In a dingy office, with papers and books scattered about in the most bewildering
disorder, at a long desk-table, likewise piled with books and journals and papers,
sat an old man who looked exactly like the pictures of Ibsen. He was sitting all
crumpled up, as it were, in a big armchair; but as I came forward he sat up straight.
He stared at me so long, and with such an expression of amazement, that I became
uneasy and embarrassed. I remember holding on tight to Captain Hollowell’s sleeve on
one side and Mr. Marsden’s on the other. And then at last a single sentence came from
the lips of my employer. It came explosively, despairingly:</p>
<p><q>My God!</q> said the owner of <q>The Lantern</q>.</p>
<p>It seems that our Quebec friend had been assigned to obtain for <q>The Lantern</q> a
mature and experienced journalist. Mr. Campbell had expected a woman of the then
approved, if feared, type of bluestocking, and behold a baby had been dropped into
his lap!</p>
<p>The captain and Marsden had departed. I sat alone with that old man who looked like
Ibsen, and who stared at me as if I were some freak of nature. He had his elbows upon
his desk, and his chin propped up in the cup of his hands. He began to ask me
questions, after he had literally stared me down and out of countenance, and I sat
there before him, twisting my handkerchief in my hand.</p>
<p><q>How old are you?</q></p>
<p><q>Seventeen. I mean—I’m going on eighteen</q>. Eighteen was, in fact, eleven months
off.</p>
<p><q>Have you ever worked before?</q></p>
<p><q>I’ve written things</q>.</p>
<p>After a silent moment, during which he glared at me more angrily than ever, he
demanded:</p>
<p><q>What have you written?</q></p>
<p><q>Poetry</q>, I said, and stopped because he said again in that lost voice, <q>My
God!</q></p>
<p><q>What else?</q></p>
<p><q>I had a story published in ‘The Star’</q>, I said. <q>I’ve got it here, if you’d
like to see it</q>.</p>
<p>He made a motion of emphatic dissent.</p>
<p><q>What else have you done?</q></p>
<p><q>I taught myself shorthand</q>, I said, <q>and I can take dictation as fast as you
can talk</q>.</p>
<p>He looked frankly skeptical and in no wise impressed.</p>
<p><q>How can you do that if you’ve had no experience as a stenographer?</q></p>
<p><q>I got a shorthand book</q>. I said eagerly. <q>It’s not at all hard to teach
yourself after you learn the rudiments. My sister showed me that. She’s secretary
to the Premier of Canada. As soon as I had learned shorthand, I acquired practice
and speed by going to church and prayer-meetings and taking down sermons</q>.</p>
<pb n="809"/>
<p>After a moment he said grudgingly:</p>
<p><q>Not a bad idea</q>. And then added. <q>What do you think you are going to do
here?</q></p>
<p><q>Write for your paper</q>, I said as conciliatingly as I could.</p>
<p><q>What?</q> he inquired curiously.</p>
<p><q>Why—anything—poetry—</q></p>
<p>He waved his hand in such a dismissing manner that I got up, though it was my poetry,
not I, he wished to be rid of just then. I went nearer to him.</p>
<p><q>I know you don’t want me</q>, I said, <q>and I don’t want to stay. I’m sorry I
came. I wouldn’t if I had known that this was a hot, beastly old country where
nearly everybody is black. If you’ll just get me back to the boat, I know Captain
Hollowell will let me go back with him, even if I don’t have the money for my
fare</q>.</p>
<p><q>What about the money I paid for you to come here?</q> he snarled. <q>Think I’m
going to lose that?</q></p>
<p>I did not answer him. I felt enervated, homesick, miserable, and tired. He got up
presently, limped over to another table,—he was lame,—poured a glass of water,
brought it to me with a big fan, and said gruffly, <q>Sit!</q></p>
<p>The act, I don’t know why, touched me. In a dim way I began to appreciate his
position. He was a lame old man running a fiery, two-sheet little newspaper in this
tropical land far from his native Canada. There was no staff, and, indeed, none of
the ordinary appurtenances of a newspaper office. He employed only one able
assistant, and as he could not get such a person in Jamaica and could not afford to
pay a man’s salary, being very loyal to Canada, he had been accustomed to send there
for bright and expert young women reporters to do virtually all the work of running
his newspaper. Newspaper women are not plentiful in Canada. The fare to Jamaica is,
or was then, about $55. Mr. Campbell must have turned all these things over in his
mind as he looked at this latest product of his native land, a green, green girl of
seventeen, whose promise that she would <q>look older next day</q>, when her <q>hair
was done up</q>, carried little reassurance as to her intelligence or ability.</p>
<p>He did a lot of <q>cussing</q> of our common friend in Canada. Finally he said that
he would take me over to the Myrtle Bank Hotel, where accommodations had been
arranged for me, and we could talk the matter over in the morning.</p>
<p>While he was getting his stick and hat, the latter a green-lined helmet, I couldn’t
resist looking at some of his books. He caught me doing this, and asked me gruffly if
I had ever read anything. I said:</p>
<p><q>Yes, Dickens, George Eliot, and Sir Walter Scott; and I’ve read Huxley and Darwin,
and lots of books on astronomy to my father, who is very fond of that subject</q>.
As he made no comment, nor seemed at all impressed by my erudition, I added proudly:
<q>My father’s an Oxford man, and a descendant of the family of Sir Isaac
Newton</q>.</p>
<p>There was some legend to this effect in our family. In fact, the greatness of my
father’s people had been a sort of fairy-story with us all, and we knew that it was
his marriage with mama that had cut him off from his kindred. My Jamaica employer,
however, showed no interest in my distinguished ancestry. He took me roughly by the
arm, and half leaning upon, half leading me, hobbled with me out into the dark
street.</p>
<p>It was about nine o’clock. As we approached the hotel, which was only a short
distance from the office of <q>The Lantern</q>, it pleased me as a happy omen that
somewhere within those fragrant, moonlit gardens a band began to play most
beautifully.</p>
<p>Mr. Campbell took me to the room of the girl whose place I was to take, and who was
also from Quebec. She had already gone to bed, but she rose to let me in. Mr.
Campbell merely knocked hard on the door and said:</p>
<p><q>Here’s Miss Ascough. You should have met her</q>, and angrily shoved me in, so it
seemed to me.</p>
<p>Miss Foster, her hair screwed up in curl-papers, after looking at me only a moment,
said in a tired, complaining voice, <pb n="810"/> like that of a sick person, that I
had better get to bed right away; and then she got into bed, and turned her face to
the wall. I tried to draw her out a bit while undressing, but to all my questions she
returned monosyllabic answers. I put out the light, and crept into bed beside her.
The last thing she said to me, and very irritably, was:</p>
<p><q>Keep to your own side of the bed</q>.</p>
<p>I slept fairly well, considering the oppressiveness of the heat, but I awoke once
when something buzzed against my face.</p>
<p><q>What’s that?</q> I cried, sitting up in bed.</p>
<p>She murmured crossly:</p>
<p><q>Oh, for heaven’s sake lie down! I haven’t slept a wink for a century. You’ll have
to get used to Jamaica bugs and scorpions. They ought to have screens in the
windows!</q></p>
<p>After that I slept with the sheet over my head.</p>
<p><milestone unit="sectionBreak"/></p>
</div>
<div>
<head>IV</head>
<p>I was awakened at six the following morning. A strange, singsong voice called into
the room:</p>
<p><q>Marnin’, missee! Heah’s your coffee</q>.</p>
<p>I found Miss Foster up and dressed. She was sitting at a table drinking coffee. She
put up the shade and let the light in. Then she came over to the bed, where the maid
had set the tray. I was looking at what I supposed to be my breakfast. It consisted
of a cup of black coffee and a single piece of dry toast.</p>
<p><q>You’d better drink your coffee</q>, said Miss Foster, wearily. <q>It will sustain
you for a while</q>.</p>
<p>I got a good look at her, standing by my bed. The yellowness of her skin startled me,
and I wondered whether it could be possible that she, too, was <q>colored</q>. Then I
remembered that she was from my home. Moreover, her eyes were a pale blue, and her
hair a light, nondescript brown. She had a peevish expression, even now while she
made an effort at friendliness. She sat down on the side of my bed, and while I drank
my coffee and nibbled my piece of toast she told me a few things about the
country.</p>
<p>Jamaica, she said, was the beastliest country on the face of the earth. Though for a
few months its climate was tolerable, the rest of the year it was almost unbearable.
What with the crushing heat and the dirty, drizzling rain that followed, and fell
without ceasing for months at a time, all ambition, all strength, all hope were
slowly knocked out of one. There were a score of fevers, each one as bad as the
others. She was suffering from one now. That was why she was going home. She was
young, so she said, but she felt like an old woman. She pitied me, she declared, for
what was before me, and said Campbell had no right to bring healthy young girls from
Canada without first telling them what they were coming up against.</p>
<p>I put in here that perhaps I should fare better. I said:</p>
<p><q>I’m almost abnormally healthy and strong, you know, even if I look thin. I’m the
wiry kind</q>.</p>
<p>She sniffed at that, and then said, with a shrug:</p>
<p><q>Oh, well, maybe you will escape. I’m sure I wish you better luck than mine. But
one thing’s certain: you’ll lose that Canadian complexion of yours all
right</q>.</p>
<p>My duties, she said, would be explained to me by Mr. Campbell himself, though she was
going to stay over a day or two to help break me in. My salary would be ten dollars a
week and free board and lodging at the Myrtle Bank Hotel. I told her of the slighting
reception I had received at the hands of Mr. Campbell, and she said:</p>
<p><q>Oh, well, he’s a crank. You couldn’t please him no matter what you did</q>. Then
she added: <q>I don’t see, anyhow, why he objected to you. Brains aren’t so much
needed in a position like this as legs and a constitution of iron</q>.</p>
<p>As the day advanced, the heat encroached. Miss Foster sat fanning herself <pb n="811"
/> languidly by the window, looking out with a far-away expression. I told her about
my clothes, and how mortified I was to find them so different from those of the
others on the boat. She said:</p>
<p><q>You can have all my clothes, if you want. They won’t do for Canada</q>.</p>
<p>That suggested a brilliant solution of my problem of how I was to secure immediately
suitable clothes for Jamaica. I suggested that as she was going to Canada, she could
have mine, and I would take hers. The proposition seemed to give her a sort of grim
amusement. She looked over my clothes. She took the woolen underwear and heavy,
hand-knitted stockings (that Sung-Sung had made for an older brother, and which had
descended to me after two sisters had had them!) two woolen skirts, my heavy
overcoat, and several other pieces.</p>
<p>She gave me a number of white muslin dresses,—they seemed lovely to me,—an evening
gown with a real low neck, cotton underwear, hose, etc.</p>
<p>I put my hair up for the first time that morning. As it curled a bit, this was not
difficult to do. I simply rolled it up at the back and held the chignon in place with
four bone hair-pins that she gave me. I put on one of her white muslin dresses, but
it was so long for me that we had to make a wide tuck in it. Then I wore a wide
Leghorn hat, the only trimming of which was a piece of cream-colored mull twisted
like a scarf about the crown.</p>
<p>I asked Miss Foster if I looked all right, and was suitably dressed, and she said
grudgingly:</p>
<p><q>Yes, you’ll do. You’re quite pretty. You’d better look out</q>.</p>
<p>Asked to explain, she merely shrugged her shoulders and said:</p>
<p><q>There’s only a handful of white women here, you know. We don’t count the tourists.
You’ll have all you can do to hold the men here at arm’s-length</q>.</p>
<p>This last prospect by no means bothered me. I had the most decided and instinctive
liking for the opposite sex.</p>
<p>The hotel was beautiful, built somewhat in the Spanish style, with a great inner
court, and an arcade that ran under the building. Long verandas ran out like piers on
each side of the court, which was part of the wonderful garden, which extended to the
shores of the Caribbean.</p>
<p>Miss Foster took me into the hotel’s great dining-room, which was like a pleasant
open conservatory, with great palms and plants everywhere. There we had breakfast,
for it seems coffee and toast were just an appetizer. I never became used to Jamaica
cooking. It was mushy, hot, and sweet.</p>
<p>After breakfast we reported at <q>The Lantern</q>, where Mr. Campbell, looking even
fiercer in the day, impatiently awaited us. He wished Miss Foster to take me directly
out to Government House and teach me my duties there, as the Legislative Council was
then in session. He mumbled off a lot of instructions to Miss Foster, ignoring me
completely. His apparent contempt for me, and his evident belief that there was no
good to be expected from me, whetted my desire to prove to him that I was not such a
fool as I looked, or, rather, as he seemed to think I looked. I listened intently to
everything he said to Miss Foster, but even so I received only a confused medley of
<q>Bills—attorney-general—Representative So and So—Hon. Mr. So and So,
etc</q>.</p>
<p>I carried away with me, however, vivid instruction, and that was that it was
absolutely necessary for <q>The Lantern</q> to have the good-will of the Hon. Mr.
Burbank, whom we must support in everything. It seemed, according Mr. Campbell, that
there was some newspaper libel law that was being pressed in the House that, if
passed, would bring the Jamaica press down to a pusillanimous condition.</p>
<p>Mr. Burbank was to fight this bill for the newspapers. He was, in fact, our
representative and champion. <q>The Lantern</q>, in return, was prepared to support
him in other measures that he was fathering. Miss Foster and I were to remember to
treat him with more than common attention. I did not know, of course, that <pb
n="812"/> this meant in our newspaper references to him, and I made a fervent vow
personally to win the favor of said Burbank.</p>
<p>We got into a splendid little equipage, upholstered in tan cloth and with a large tan
umbrella top, which was lined with green.</p>
<p>We drove for several miles through a country remarkable for its beautiful scenery. It
was a land of color. It was like a land of perpetual spring—a spring that was ever
green. I saw not a single shade that was dull. Even the trunks of the gigantic trees
seemed to have a warm tone. The flowers were startlingly bright—yellow, scarlet, and
purple.</p>
<p>We passed many country people along the road. They moved with a sort of languid,
swinging amble, as if they dragged, not lifted, their flat feet. Women carried on
their heads enormous bundles and sometimes trays. How they balanced them so firmly
was always a mystery to me, especially as most of them either had their hands on
their hips, or, more extraordinary, carried or led children, and even ran at times.
Asses, loaded on each side with produce, ambled along as draggingly as the
natives.</p>
<p>Miss Foster made only three or four remarks during the entire journey. These are her
remarks. They are curious taken altogether:</p>
<p><q>This carriage belongs to Mr. Burbank. He supplies all the vehicles, by the way,
for the press</q>.</p>
<p><q>Those are the botanical gardens. Jamaica has Mr. Burbank to thank for their
present excellent condition. Remember that</q>.</p>
<p><q>We are going by the Burbank plantation now. He has a place in Kingston, too, and a
summer home in the mountains</q>.</p>
<p><q>If we beat that newspaper libel law, you’ll have a chance to write all the funny
things and rhymes you want about the mean sneaks who are trying to push it
through</q>.</p>
<p>Even during the long drive through the green country I had been insensibly affected
by the ever-growing heat. In the long chamber of Government House, where the session
was to be held, there seemed not a breath of air stirring. It was insufferably hot,
though the place was virtually empty when we arrived. I had a shuddering notion of
what it would be like when full.</p>
<p>Miss Foster was hustling about, getting <q>papers</q> and <q>literature</q> of
various kinds, and as the legislators arrived, she chatted with some of them. She had
left me to my own devices, and I did not know what to do with myself. I was much
embarrassed, as every one who passed into the place took a look at me. We were the
only two girls in the House.</p>
<p>There was a long table in the middle of the room, at which the members of Parliament
and the elected members had their seats, and there was a smaller table at one side
for the press. I had remained by the door, awaiting Miss Foster’s instructions. The
room was rapidly beginning to fill. A file of black soldiers spread themselves about
the room, standing very fine and erect against the walls. At the council table, on
one side, were the Parliament members, Englishmen, every one of whom wore the
conventional monocle. On the other side were the elected members, who were, without
an exception, colored men. I was musing over this when a very large, stout, and
handsome personage (he was a personage!) entered ponderously followed by several
younger men. Every one in the room rose, and until he took his seat (in a big chair
on a little elevated platform at the end of the room) they remained standing. This
was his Excellency Sir Henry Drake, the Governor-General of Jamaica. The House was
now in session.</p>
<p>By this time I experienced a natural anxiety to know what was to become of me. Surely
I was not supposed to stand there by the door. Glancing across at the press table, I
presently saw Miss Foster among the reporters: She was half standing, and beckoning
to me to join her. Confused and embarrassed, I passed along at the back of one end of
the council table, and was proceeding in the direction of the <pb n="813"/> press
table, when suddenly the room reverberated with loud cries from the soldiers of,
<q>Order! order! order!</q></p>
<p>I hesitated only a moment, ignorant of the fact that that call was directed against
me, and, as I paused, I looked directly into the purpling face of the Governor of
Jamaica. He had put on his monocle. His face was long and preternaturally solemn, but
there was a queer, twisted smile about his mouth, and I swear that he winked at me
through that monocle, which fell into his hand. I proceeded to my seat, red as a
beet.</p>
<p><q>Great guns!</q> whispered Miss Foster, dragging me down beside her, <q>you walked
in <emph>front</emph> of the governor! You should have gone behind his chair. What
will Mr. Campbell say when he knows you were called to order the first day! A fine
reflection on ‘The Lantern’!</q> She added the last sentence almost bitterly.</p>
<p>What went on at that session I never in the world could have told. It was all like an
incomprehensible dream. Black men, the elected members, rose, and long and eloquently
talked in regard to some bill. White men (government) rose and languidly responded,
sometimes with sort of drawling good humor, sometimes satirically. I began to feel
the effect of the oppressive atmosphere in a way I had not yet experienced. An
unconquerable impulse to lay my head down upon the table and go to sleep seized upon
me, and I could scarcely keep my eyes open. At last my head did fall back against the
chair; my eyes closed. I did not exactly faint, but I succumbed slightly to the heat.
I heard a voice whispering at my ear, for the proceedings went on, as if it were
common thing for a woman to faint in Government House.</p>
<p><q>Drink this!</q> said the voice, and I opened my eyes and looked up into a fair,
boyish face that was bending over mine. I drank that cool Jamaican kola, and
recovered myself sufficiently to sit up again. Said my new friend:</p>
<p><q>It’ll be cooler soon. You’ll get used to the climate, and if I were you, I
wouldn’t try to do <emph>any</emph> work to-day</q>.</p>
<p>I said:</p>
<p><q>I’ve got to <emph>learn</emph>. Miss Foster sails to-morrow, and after
that—</q></p>
<p><q>I’ll show you after that</q>, he said and smiled reassuringly.</p>
<p>At one there was an adjournment for luncheon. I then became the center of interest,
and was introduced by Miss Fos- ter to the members of the press. Jamaica boasted
three papers beside ours, and there were representatives at the Parliament’s sessions
from other West Indian islands. I was also introduced to several of the members, both
black and white.</p>
<p>I went to luncheon with Miss Foster and two members of Parliament (white) and three
reporters, one of them the young man who had given me the kola, and whose name was
Verley Marchmont. He was an Englishman, the younger son in a poor, but titled,
family. We had luncheon at a little inn hard by, and while there I made three
engagements for the week. With one of the men I was to go to a polo match (Jamaica
had a native regiment whose officers were English), with another I was to attend a
ball in a lighthouse, and young Marchmont, who was only about eighteen, was to call
upon me that evening.</p>
<p>At the end of the afternoon session, which was not quite so wearying, as it had grown
cooler, I was introduced by Miss Foster to the governor’s secretary, Lord George
Fitzpatrick, who had been smiling at me from behind the governor’s back most of the
day. By him I was introduced to the governor, who seemed to regard me as a more or
less funny curiosity, if I am to judge from his humorous expression. Lord George also
introduced me to other government members, and he asked me if I liked candies. I said
I did. He asked me if I played golf or rode horseback. I said I didn’t, but I could
learn, and he said he was a great teacher.</p>
<p>By this time I thought I had met every one connected with the House, when suddenly I
heard some one—I think it was one of the reporters—call out:</p>
<p><q>Oh, all right. Mr. Burbank. I’ll see to it</q>.</p>
<pb n="814"/>
<p>Miss Foster was drawing me along toward the door. It was time to go. Our carriage was
waiting for us. As we were going out, I asked her whether I had yet met Mr. Burbank,
and she said she <q>supposed so</q>.</p>
<p><q>I don’t remember meeting him</q>, I persisted, <q>and I want very specially to
meet Mr. Burbank</q>.</p>
<p>On the steps below us a man somewhat dudishly attired in immaculate white duck and
wearing a green-lined helmet, turned around and looked up at us. His face was almost
pure black. His nose was large and somewhat hooked. I have subsequently learned that
he was partly Hebrew. He had an enormous mouth, and teeth thickly set with gold. He
wore gold-rimmed glasses with a chain, and these and his fine clothes gave a touch of
distinction to his appearance. At least it made him stand out from the average
colored man. As I spoke, I saw him look at me with a curious expression; then
smiling, he held out his big hand.</p>
<p><q>I am the Hon. Mr. Burbank</q>, he said.</p>
<p>I was startled to find that this man I had been planning to cultivate was black. I do
not know why, but as I looked down into that ingratiating face, I was filled with a
sudden panic of almost instinctive fear, and although he held out his hand to me, I
did not take it. For that I was severely lectured by Miss Foster all the way back.
She reminded me that I could not afford to snub so powerful a Jamaican as Burbank,
and that if I had the slightest feeling of race prejudice, I had better either kill
it at once or clear out of Jamaica. She said that socially there was absolutely no
difference between the white and colored people in Jamaica.</p>
<p>As a matter of fact, I had literally never even heard the expression <q>race
prejudice</q> before, and I was as far from feeling it as any person in the world.
It must be remembered that in Canada we do not encounter the problem of race. One
color there is as good as another. Certainly people of Indian extraction are well
thought of and esteemed, and my own mother was a foreigner. What should I, a girl who
had never before been outside Quebec, and whose experience had been within the narrow
confines of home and a small circle, know of race prejudice?</p>
<p>Vaguely I had a feeling that all men were equal as men. I do not believe it was in me
to turn from a man merely because of his race, so long as he himself was not
personally repugnant to me. I myself was dark and foreign-looking, but the blond type
I adored. In all my most fanciful imaginings and dreams I had always been
golden-haired and blue-eyed.</p>
<p><milestone unit="sectionBreak"/></p>
</div>
<div>
<head>V</head>
<p>I got on better with Mr. Campbell after Miss Foster went. He told me it was necessary
for us to keep on the right side of Mr. Burbank, who was one of the greatest magnates
and philanthropists of Jamaica, but he took occasion to contradict some of Miss
Foster’s statements. It was not true, he said, that there was no social distinction
between black and white in Jamaica. That was the general opinion of tourists in
Jamaica, who saw only the surface of thing, but as a matter of fact, though the
richest people and planters were of colored blood; though they were invited to all
the governor’s parties and the various official functions; though they were in vast
evidence at polo and cricket matches; though many of them were talented and
cultivated, nevertheless, there was a fine line drawn between them and the native
white people who counted for anything. This he wished me to bear in mind, so that
while I should always act in such a way as never in the slightest to hurt or offend
the feelings of the colored element, whose good-will was essential to <q>The
Lantern</q>, I must retain my dignity and stoop to no familiarity, which would
bring me and <q>The Lantern</q> into disrepute with the white element, whose
good-will was equally essential.</p>
<pb n="815"/>
<p>I think in less than a week my employer began grudgingly to approve of me; in about
two weeks we were friends. His eyes no longer glared at me through his thick glasses.
Once when I timidly proffered one of my <q>poems</q>, those same fierce eyes actually
beamed upon me. What is more, he published the poem!</p>
<p>Of course it was chiefly my work that won me favor with Mr. Campbell. I came back
every day from Government House with accurate and intelligent reports of the debates.
I wonder what Mr. Campbell would have said to me had he known that nearly all my
first reports were written for me by young Verley Marchmont of <q>The Daily Call</q>.
<q>The Lantern’s</q> deadliest rival! For the life of me, I never could grasp the
details of the debates clearly enough to report them coherently, and so young
Marchmont obligingly <q>helped</q> me. However, these debates were only a part of my
work, though at this time they constituted the chief of my duties.</p>
<p>For a young person in a hot country I was kept extremely busy. Even after my day’s
work was over I had to bustle about the hotel and dig up society notes and stories,
or I had to attend meetings, functions, and parties of various kinds.</p>
<p>One morning after I had been on <q>The Lantern</q> about a week, Mr. Campbell handed
me a list of my duties as an employee of <q>The Lantern</q>. Perhaps you would like
to know exactly what they were:</p>
<list type="numbered">
<item n="1">To attend and report the debates of the Legislative Council when in
session.</item>
<item n="2">To report City Council proceedings.</item>
<item n="3">To report court cases of interest to the public.</item>
<item n="4">To keep posted on all matters of interest to Great Britain and
Jamaica.</item>
<item n="5">To make calls upon and interview at intervals His Excellency the
Governor-General, the Colonial Secretary, the Commander of the Forces, the
Attorney-General, and other Government officials.</item>
<item n="6">To interview elected members when matters of interest demanded.</item>
<item n="7">To interview prominent Americans or those who were conspicuous on account
of great wealth.</item>
<item n="8">To report political speeches.</item>
<item n="9">To report races, cricket matches, polo, etc.</item>
<item n="10">To represent <q>The Lantern</q> at social functions.</item>
<item n="11">To visit stores, factories, etc., and to write a weekly advertising
column.</item>
<item n="12">To prepare semi-weekly a bright and entertaining woman’s column, into
which must be skilfully woven the names of Jamaica’s society women.</item>
<item n="13">To review books and answer correspondence.</item>
<item n="14">To correct proof in the absence of the proof-reader.</item>
<item n="15">To edit the entire paper when sickness or absence of the editor
prevented him from attending.</item>
</list>
<p>Mr. Campbell watched my face keenly as I read that list, and finally, when I made no
comment, he prompted me with a gruff. <q>Well?</q> To which I replied, with a
smile:</p>
<p><q>I think what you want, Mr. Campbell, is a mental and physical acrobat</q>.</p>
<p><q>Do I understand from that</q>, he thundered, <q>that you cannot perform these
necessay duties?</q></p>
<p><q>On the contrary</q>, I returned coolly, <q>I think that I can perform them all,
one at a time; but you have left out one important item</q>.</p>
<p><q>Well, what?</q></p>
<p><q>Poetry</q>, I said.</p>
<p>My answer tickled him immensely, and he burst into loud laughter.</p>
<p><q>Got any about you?</q> he demanded. <q>I believe you have it secreted all over
you</q>.</p>
<p>I said:</p>
<p><q>I’ve none of my own this morning, out here’s a fine little verse I wish you’d top
our editorial page with</q>, and I handed him the following:</p>
<q>
<lg>
<l>For the cause that lacks assistance;</l>
<l>For the wrong that needs resistance;</l>
<l>For the future in the distance,</l>
<l>And the good that we can do!</l>
</lg>
</q>
<p>With such a motto, we felt called upon <pb n="816"/> to be pugnacious and virtuous,
and all of that session of Parliament our little sheet kept up a peppery fight for
the rights of the people.</p>
<p>Mr. Campbell said that I looked strong and impudent enough to do anything, and when I
retorted that I was not the least bit impudent, but, on the contrary, a dreamer, he
said crossly:</p>
<p><q>If that’s the case, you’ll be incompetent</q>.</p>
<p>But I was a dreamer, and I was not incompetent.</p>
<p>It was all very well, however, to joke with Mr. Campbell about these duties. They
were pretty hard just the same, and I was kept rushing from morning till night. There
was always a pile of work waiting me upon my return from Government House, and I
could see that Mr. Campbell intended gradually to shift the major part of the work
entirely upon me. The unaccustomed climate, the intense heat, and the work, which I
really loved—all contributed to make me very tired by evening, when my duties were by
no means ended.</p>
<p>Miss Foster’s warning that I should have to keep the men at arm’s-length occasionally
recurred to me, but I dare say she exaggerated the matter. It is true that
considerable attention was directed at me when I first came to Jamaica, and I
received no end of flowers and candies and other little gifts; but my work was so
exacting and ceaseless that it occupied all of my time. I could do little more than
pause a moment or two to exchange word or joke with this or that man who sought
flirtations with me. I was always in a hurry. Rushing along through the hotel lobby
or parlors or verandas, I scarcely had time to get more than a confused impression of
various faces.</p>
<p>There was a ball nearly every night, and I always had to attend, for a little while,
anyway; but I did not exactly mingle with the guests. I never danced, though lots of
men asked me. I would get my list of guests and the description of the women’s
dresses, etc., write my column, and despatch it by boy to <q>The Lantern</q>, and I
would go to bed while the music was still throbbing through the hotel. Often the
guests were dancing till dawn.</p>
<p>Now I come to Dr. Manning. He was the one man in the hotel who persistently sought me
and endeavored to make love to me. He was an American, one of a yachting party
cruising in the Caribbean. I was not attracted to him at all, and as far as I could,
I avoided him; but I could not come out upon the verandas or appear anywhere about
the hotel without his seeming to arise from somewhere, and come with his flattering
smiles and jokes. His hair was gray, and he had a pointed, grizzled beard. He was
tall, and carried himself like a German officer.</p>
<p>He was always begging me to go to places with him, for walks, drives, boat-trips,
etc., and finally I did accept an invitation to walk with him in the botanical
gardens, which adjoined, and were almost part of our own grounds.</p>
<p>That evening was a lovely one, with a great moon overhead, and the sea like a vast
glittering sheet of quicksilver. The Marine Band was playing. People were dancing in
the ball-room and on the verandas and out in a large pagoda in the gardens. Down
along the sanded paths we passed numerous couples strolling, the bare shoulders of