"Oh, my!" cried Constance, entering at this moment, "you two appear to have worked yourself into a frenzy of excitement." She surveyed both, questioningly.
"We have," her brother replied.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Where Are You From?"
Mildred worked hard that day. As she went from the rear of one house to another, she studied the people she met, more seriously than she had done before. By this time, her work had become automatic, and she did not find it hard or monotonous, to say the same thing over and over again. She had, moreover, become accustomed to the class of people among whom she worked. She liked it now, and for more than one reason; but perhaps the greatest reason, was because it brought her into the closest contact with humanity, without regard to conventionality. The people she met daily, with few exceptions, made no attempt to be conventional. They were human, almost all of them. She met them in their vocations; she studied their environment. Some she saw, grown people with families, but themselves like children. They gave their word with apparent sincerity, and did not make any more effort to keep it than the merest babe. Why did they not? She asked this question, and then studied them carefully for the answer. It was ignorance. It amused her to find so many who were positive they did not want it, did not even read, so how could they use it? "But you can read?" she would inquire. "Sho!" would invariably come the answer. Then came argument. Force of reason on her part, and sometimes, she guiltily felt, it was by force of argument they were induced to buy. She now paid little attention when they remarked that they did not want the book. Obviously, since the most stubborn ones were, very often after argument, the most appreciative buyers, she found it reasonable to ignore their words of objection.
Mildred's life was a diversion that was much to her liking. She was learning the greatest lesson a woman could learn—the study of human nature.
On Sunday, when she met others (Wilson Jacobs' church had for its members the more thoughtful and respectable Negro element), she was the recipient of many surprised expressions. They were, she invariably found, surprised that she canvassed among the servant class. She did not appraise them of the practical side of it; in fact, of the masses, these were more able to buy. She saw, as the Sundays went by, that much of the display was a pretense. Many of those who expressed such surprise were themselves unwilling to buy a book. Always she found (and especially among the teachers, whom she thought the most pretentious) some artful excuse. Most of them had a library which contained many books, but few by their own race. They had the works of a poet who had died some years ago; they also had a copy of a book or so by the principal of Tuskegee. And then, one day she learned, from a most reliable and unbiased source: "That those people bought the works of the now dead poet, because his name had become a fetish. The white people had accepted these men's work and called them great. Therefore, the Negroes had accordingly followed suit. So the Negro author must first get a white audience, which will laud the greatness of his pen, and then the Negroes will buy, calling the book great also."
Miss Latham found conditions thus, and governed her work accordingly. But, as time went on, she met surprises. They did not buy The Tempest, but they read it. She found it borrowed among them all. They never offered to buy it, but they read it nevertheless.
She did not understand this at first.