ir modes of battle. But there was one thing
against which grandmother Harcourt set her face like flint, and that was
sending children to saloons for beer, and once she flamed out with
righteous indignation when one of her neighbors, in her absence, sent
Annette to a saloon to buy her some beer. She told her in emphatic terms
she must never do so again, that she wanted her girl to grow up a
respectable woman, and that she ought to be ashamed of herself, not only
to be guzzling beer like a toper, but to send anybody's child to a
saloon to come in contact with the kind of men who frequented such
places, and that any women who sent their children to such places were
training their boys to be drunkards and their girls to be
street-walkers. "I am poor," she said, "but I mean to keep my credit up
and if you and I live in this neighborhood a hundred years you must
never do that thing again."

Her neighbor looked dazed and tried to stammer out an apology, but she
never sent Annette to a beer saloon again, and in course of time she
became a good temperance woman herself, influenced by the faithfulness
of grandmother Harcourt.

The court in which Mrs. Harcourt lived was not a very desirable place,
but, on account of her color, eligible houses could not always be
obtained, and however decent, quiet or respectable she might appear on
applying for a house, she was often met with the rebuff, "We don't rent
to colored people," and men who virtually assigned her race the lowest
place and humblest positions could talk so glibly of the degradation of
the Negro while by their Christless and inhuman prejudice they were
helping add to their low social condition. In the midst of her
unfavorable environments Mrs. Harcourt kept her home neat and tidy; sent
Annette to school constantly and tried to keep her out of mischief, but
there was moral contagion in the social atmosphere of Tennis Court and
Annette too often succumbed to its influence; but Annette was young and
liked the company of young girls and it seemed cruel to confine the
child's whole life to the home and schoolhouse and give her no chance to
be merry and playful with girls of her own age. So now and then
grandmother Harcourt would let her spend a little time with some of the
neighbors' girls but from the questions that Annette often asked her
grandmother and the conversations she sometimes repeated Mrs. Harcourt
feared that she was learning things which should only be taught by