So it seemed our way was “hedged about” and surrounded by walls of circumstances too thick and solid to be pulled down, and we said no more.
But some weeks after this conversation, we had a visit from a friend—“Mozis Addums”—who having lived in New York and hearing us express a wish to live there, said:
“What! exchange a home in old Virginia for one on Fifth Avenue? You don’t know what you are talking about! They are not even called ‘homes’ there, but ‘house;’ where they turn into bed at midnight; eat stale-bread breakfasts; have brilliant parties—where several thousand people meet who don’t care anything about each other. They have no soul life; but shut themselves up in themselves, live for themselves, and never have any social enjoyment like ours.”
“But,” we said, “could not our friends come to see us there as well as anywhere else?”
“No indeed!” he answered. “Your hearts would soon be as cold and dead as your marble door-fronts. You wouldn’t want to see anybody, and nobody would want to see you.”
“You are complimentary, certainly!”
“I know all about it; and,” he continued, “I know you could not find on Fifth Avenue such women as your mother and grandmother, who never think of themselves, but are constantly planning and providing for others, making their homes comfortable and pleasant, and attending to the wants and welfare of so many negroes. And that is what the women all over the South are doing and what the New York women cannot comprehend. How can anybody know, except ourselves, the personal sacrifices of our women?”
“Well,” said my sister, “you need not be so severe and eloquent because we thought we would like to live in New York! If we should sell all we possess, we could never afford to live there. Besides, you know our mother would as soon think of selling her children as her servants—who indeed are beginning to possess her, instead of her possessing them.”
“But,” he replied, “I can’t help talking, for I hear our people abused, and called indolent and self-indulgent, when I know they have valor and endurance enough. And I believe so much ‘material progress’ leaves no leisure for the highest development of heart and mind. Where the whole energy of a people is applied to making money, the souls of men become dwarfed.”
“We do not feel,” we said, “like abusing Northern people, in whose thrift and enterprise we found much to admire; and especially the self-reliance of their women, enabling them to take care of themselves and travel from Maine to the Gulf without an escort, while we find it impossible to travel a day’s journey without a special protector.”