Pedestrians paused. There was a commotion at the restaurant door as several men rushed out, but the imposing porter was too quick; he had caught the eye and pocketed the bill of the lady. In a moment, evidently thinking the couple together, he had handed both her and Matthew into the taxi, slammed the door, and they had whirled away. In a trice they fled down the Friedrichstrasse, left across the Französische, again left to Charlotten, and down the Linden. Matthew glanced anxiously back. They had been too quick, and there was apparently no pursuit. He leaned forward and spoke to the chauffeur, and they drove up to the curb near the Brandenburg Gate and stopped.
“Mille remerciements, Monsieur!” said the lady.
Matthew searched his head for the right French answer as he started to step out, but could not remember: “Oh—oh—don’t mention it,” he stammered.
“Ah—you are English? I thought you were French or Spanish!”
She spoke clear clipped English with perfect accent, to Matthew’s intense relief. Suppose she had spoken only French! He hastened to explain: “I am an American Negro.”
“An American Negro?” The lady bent forward in sudden interest and stared at him. “An American Negro!” she repeated. “How singular—how very singular! I have been thinking of American Negroes all day! Please do not leave me yet. Can you spare a moment? Chauffeur, drive on!”
IV
As they sat at tea in the Tiergarten, under the tall black trees, Matthew’s story came pouring out:
“I was born in Virginia, Prince James County, where we black folk own most of the land. My mother, now many years a widow, farmed her little forty acres to educate me, her only child. There was a good school there with teachers from Hampton, the great boarding-school not far away. I was young when I finished the course and was sent to Hampton. There I was unhappy. I wanted to study for a profession, and they insisted on making me a farmer. I hated the farm. My mother finally sent me North. I boarded first with a cousin and then with friends in New York and went through high school and through the City College. I specialized on the premedical course, and by working nights and summers and playing football (amateur, of course, but paid excellent ‘expenses’ in fact), I was able to enter the new great medical school of the University of Manhattan, two years ago.
“It was a hard pull, but I plunged the line. I had to have scholarships, and I got them, although one Southern professor gave me the devil of a time.”
The lady interrupted. “Southern?” she asked. “What do you mean by ‘Southern’?”
“I mean from the former slave States—although the phrase isn’t just fair. Some of our most professional Southerners are Northern-born.”
The lady still looked puzzled, but Matthew talked on.
“This man didn’t mean to be unfair, but he honestly didn’t believe ‘niggers’ had brains, even if he had the evidence before him. He flunked me on principle. I protested and finally had the matter up to the Dean; I showed all my other marks and got a reexamination at an extra cost that deprived me of a new overcoat. I gave him a perfect paper, and he had to acknowledge it was ‘good,’ although he made careful inquiries to see if I had not in some way cribbed dishonestly.
“At last I got my mark and my scholarship. During my second year there were rumors among the few colored students in the clinical hospital, especially with white women patients. I laughed. It was, I was sure, a put-up rumor to scare us off. I knew black men who had gone through New York medical schools which had become parts of this great new consolidated school. There had been no real trouble. The patients never objected—only Southern students and the few Southern professors. Some of the trustees had mentioned the matter but had been shamed into silence.
“Then, too, I was firm in my Hampton training; desert and hard work were bound to tell. Prejudice was a miasma that character burned away. I believed thoroughly. I had literally pounded my triumphant way through school and life. Of course I had made insult and rebuff here and there, but I ignored them, laughed at them, and went my way. Those black people who cringed and cowered, complained of failure and ‘no chance,’ I despised—weaklings, cowards, fool! Go to work! Make a way! Compel recognition!
“In the medical school there were two other colored men just managing to crawl through. I covertly sneered at them, avoided them. What business had they there with no ability or training? I see differently now. I see there may have been a dozen reasons why Phillips of Mississippi could neither spell nor read correctly and why Jones of Georgia could not count. They had no hardworking mother, no Hampton, no happy accidents of fortune to help them on.
“While I? I rose to triumph after triumph. Just as in college I had been the leading athlete and had ridden many a time aloft on white students’ shoulders, so now, working until two o’clock in the morning and rising at six, I took prize after prize—the Mitchel Honor in physiology, the Welbright medal in pathology, the Shores Prize for biological chemistry. I ranked the second-year class at last commencement, and at our annual dinner at the Hotel Pennsylvania, sat at the head table with the medal men. I remember one classmate. He was from Atlanta, and he hesitated and whispered when he found his seat was beside
