"Indeed! I am honored to meet a real author." Sidney, however, was much embarrassed. He disliked to be pointed out as an author among his people. The most of those he met had impressed him with the feeling that an author must be something extraordinary, and were usually disappointed to find them only human beings like themselves. Edwards, however, was not only an individual of good breeding, but one with perspective, and quite capable of appreciating an effort, regardless of what the attainment might be.
Sidney had met few of his race, but who seemed to feel that to write was to be graduated from a school, with a name that was a fetish, and to be likewise a professor in some college. In order to get material and color for a work, they had not yet come to realize that it was best, and much more original as well, to come in contact with the people and observe their manner of living.
This may account, in a large degree, for the fact that so many whom he met were impractical, even badly informed.
Edwards and he became agreeable acquaintances at once. "Come take dinner with me this evening," Edwards invited, grasping Wyeth's arm, and leading him into the restaurant next door, where he had already ordered dinner. And such a meal! Wyeth had not realized that it was in the range of possibilities for the little place to prepare such a one. Moreover, to say that Edwards knew how to order would be putting it mildly. He spared no cost obviously, since the meal came to $3.75. Wyeth felt guilty, when he recalled that he ate three times a day at the same place, the kind termed "half meals," and which came to fifteen cents per.
Before they had sat long, Edwards' friend came to the table. And of all the Negroes Sidney had met, this one was the most extraordinary. The son of a Japanese mother and a Negro father, he had been educated abroad. He spent his youth in Asia, lived a portion of his life in Japan, the remainder in America and was a Buddhist. One Negro at least who didn't spell "ligon."
History and science, from the beginning of time—before Adam whom he scorned, astronomy, astrology, meteorology, the zodiac and the constellations, in fact, he seemed to know everything. Sidney, anxious always to learn what he did not know, could only sit with mouth wide open, while the other declared Jesus of Nazareth, Noah, the flood, Adam and Eve, and all the rest, the biggest liars the world ever knew.
When Sidney had occasion to speak of him to religious Negroes in after-months, they would say: "Shucks! He couldn't a-convinced me 'gainst mah Jaysus." And he would then be sorry. Sidney "believed" as much as any one else of moderate intelligence, and his acquaintance with the unusual Negro had no effect whatever upon him as a believer; but he knew that many of those who professed so much faith in "Jaysus" and cried: "We is God fearin' fo'kes," were mere "feelers" who had no thought of God whatever, in the sense he should be regarded and respected. Indeed, they did not fear him. They feared but one thing, these black people, and that was the white man, which belongs to another chapter.
"I grant all you say to be quite possible, my dear sir," said he, when the other paused in his serious discourse; "but, having been raised to the Christian faith, I am, therefore, a hopeless believer. I do, nevertheless, respect your point of view and your faith, and am glad indeed to have met you," which ended it.
Edwards proved to be a graduate of Yale, and was well informed in every way, as Sidney suspected.
He had always found it this way. The great fault he was finding daily with those of his race, was that they did not read, did not observe, and were not informed in the many things they could just as well have known.