I cannot imagine why this black brute should thus wantonly insult an inoffensive person like me, and especially a crippled ex-soldier who had walked all the way from Georgetown to see his old camping-ground: but I have given the words as he spoke them. I do not relate the incident because it will please or displease any political party: I simply tell the truth. No one will fail to admit that it was humiliating and mortifying to me, after having helped to build the fort, to be insolently turned away from it by a coarse and ignorant negro. Had a white soldier been on post there, he would have received me cordially, and if his orders not to admit any one had been very strict, he would have sent some one to his officer and asked permission to let me go in. There is always a certain sympathy between soldiers of one race; but I never yet saw any between white and black soldiers.
Although I had been in Washington many times, I had never yet ascended the dome of the Capitol, or visited the embryo “Washington Monument;” so, next day, I determined to visit both. In the Capitol, at the base of the stairway leading to the dome, the doorkeeper asked me if I had a pass to go up.
“No,” I replied; “I was not aware that any was required.”
“Yes, visitors are not admitted to the dome without passes.”
“If you will tell me where to get one,” I rejoined, “I will go and——”
“O, never mind,” he interrupted. “I won’t send you for a pass. But can you walk to the top?”
“O, yes.”
“Go ahead then, and never mind the pass. Don’t fall.”
“Thank you,” I replied, beginning the ascent.
I must say this much for my race—for this was a white man—that it is not made up entirely of selfishness. I frequently meet with little courtesies like this, and they are very gratifying to me: not for their intrinsic merit, alone, but because they show cheerful little gleamings of the bright side of the human heart.