companied by several
people who had been waiting at the door to hear the result of the
meeting, went around the corner to Miss Noble's house, a distance of a
block or two away. The house was lighted, so they knew she had not gone
to bed. They went in at the gate, and Cotten knocked at the door.

The colored maid opened it.

"Is Miss Noble home?" said Cotten.

"Yes; come in. She's waitin' ter hear from the committee."

The woman showed them into the parlor. Miss Noble rose from her seat by
the table, where she had been reading, and came forward to meet them.
They did not for a moment observe, as she took a step toward them, that
her footsteps wavered. In her agitation she was scarcely aware of it
herself.

"Miss Noble," announced Cotten, "we have come to let you know that you
have be'n 'lected teacher of the grammar school fer the next year."

"Thank you; oh, thank you so much!" she said. "I am very glad.
Mary"--she put her hand to her side suddenly and tottered--"Mary, will
you--"

A spasm of pain contracted her face and cut short her speech. She would
have fallen had Old Abe not caught her and, with Mary's help, laid her
on a couch.

The remedies applied by Mary, and by the physician who was hastily
summoned, proved unavailing. The teacher did not regain consciousness.

If it be given to those whose eyes have closed in death to linger
regretfully for a while about their earthly tenement, or from some
higher vantage-ground to look down upon it, then Henrietta Noble's
tolerant spirit must have felt, mingling with its regret, a compensating
thrill of pleasure; for not only those for whom she had labored sorrowed
for her, but the people of her own race, many of whom, in the blindness
of their pride, would not admit during her life that she served them
also, saw so much clearer now that they took charge of her poor clay,
and did it gentle reverence, and laid it tenderly away amid the dust of
their own loved and honored dead.

TWO weeks after Miss Noble's funeral the other candidate took charge of
the grammar school, which went on without any further obstacles to the
march of progress.

THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line;
the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and
Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this
problem that caused the Civil War; and however much they who ma