y arrangements are not the legitimate concern of
outsiders. The Presidency would hardly be worth the having otherwise.
The country, however, has a right to consider the incident in the light
of its probable injury to Washington and to the great and useful work in
which he is engaged.

* * * * *

In closing this page of "Shadow and Light" I am loath to believe that
this extreme display of adverse feeling regarding the President's action
in inviting Mr. Washington to dine with him, as shown in some
localities, is fully shared by the best element of Southern opinion. Few
Southern gentlemen of the class who so cheerfully pay the largest amount
of taxation for the tuition of the Negro, give him employment and do
much to advance him along educational and industrial lines, fear that
the President's action will cause the obtrusion of his bronze pedals
beneath their mahogany. Trusting that he will be inspired to foster
those elements of character so conspicuous in Mr. Washington and that
have endeared him to his broad-minded countrymen both North and South.
The best intelligence, the acknowledged leaders of the race, are not
only conservative along political lines, but are in accord with those
who claim that social equality is not the creature of law, or the
product of coercion, for, in a generic sense, there is no such thing as
social equality. The gentlemen who are so disturbed hesitate, or refuse
such equality with many of their own race; the same can be truthfully
said of the Negro. Many ante-bellum theories and usages have already
vanished under the advance of a higher civilization, but the "old
grudge" is still utilized when truth and justice refuse their service.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Washington, the American "Mecca" for political worshipers, is a
beautiful city, but well deserving its "nom de plume" as "the city of
magnificent distances;" for any one with whom you have business seems to
live five miles from every imaginable point of the compass; and should
you be on stern business bent, distance will not "lend enchantment to
the view." It is here that the patriot, and the mercenary, the ambitious
and the envious gather, and where unity and divergence hold high
carnival.

Dramatists have found no better field for portraying the vicissitudes
and uncertainties, the successes and triumphs of human endeavor. The
ante-room to the President's office presents a vivid picture, as they
wait