One day he received word that Anson Pollock was on his way to Boston in search of him. Again he made a hurried journey. This time to Exeter, NH. In his character of a fugitive slave, the lad had from the first cast his lot with the colored people of the community, and when he left Boston he was directed to see Mr. Whitfield, a negro in Exeter, who could and would help the fugitive.
Late one afternoon, just before tea time, a comely black woman stood in her long, low-raftered kitchen preparing supper before the open fireplace. There was every indication of plenty in the homely furnishings. As the woman passed rapidly from the cupboard to the table she would touch with her foot the rockers of the little red cradle which stood in the center of the floor. The baby in it was crying in a fretful way. “Oh, hush, Lizzie,” said the mother; “don’t be so cross.” There came a low rap at the open door, and in answer to her “Come in,” Jesse stepped into the room.
“Is Mr. Whitfield in?” he asked, as he doffed his hat respectfully.
“No,” was the reply, “but I expect him every minute. Sit down, won’t you? He’ll soon be in to his supper, I guess.”
Mrs. Whitfield thought him a white man, come on business with her husband. “A handsome lad,” she thought. Jesse seated himself; and then as the child continued to cry, said: “Shall I rock the cradle for you, ma’am? The child seems fretful.”
Fifteen years later Jesse married Elizabeth Whitfield, the baby he had rocked to sleep the first night of his arrival in Exeter. By her he had a large family.
Thus he was absorbed into that unfortunate race, of whom it is said that a man had better be born dead than to come into the world as part and parcel of it.
V
Ma Smith’s Lodging-House
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Gray
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
“Thank heaven that is done,” said Dora, as she sat down wearily in her mother’s large rocker in the cosy kitchen. She had been upstairs the best portion of the day preparing a room for an expected lodger. There had been windows to wash, paint to clean, a carpet to tack down, curtains to hang and furniture to place in position—in short, the thousand and one things to do that are essential to the comfort of the lodger and the good reputation of the house.
“Are you very tired, daughter?” queried her mother, as she glanced with loving pride at the graceful figure before her, at the smooth bands of dark-brown hair, now a little ruffled and disordered, and at the delicate brown face, now somewhat puckered and out of sorts from weariness.
“Well, not very tired, mummy dear; only this continual scrub and dig is not always the cheerful work we would like to think it. Still I don’t care as long as the house pays.”
The mother sighed as she asked: “Did you give her the front or back square?”
“Oh, I gave her the front square after all. She’s too beautiful for that dreary back room. I know that it is not business to let a good-paying room go under our usual price, but she’s a ‘steady’; she has the best of references. Father Andrew gives her the best of characters, and so I’ll chance getting my money back out of the next cross-grained old bachelor who comes along. See how mercenary I am getting to be since I undertook to direct the fortunes of a lodging-house”; and with a gay laugh the daughter jumped from her seat, every trace of fatigue gone, and grasping her mother about the waist, whirled her around the room to the accompaniment of a sweet, shrill whistle of the latest popular waltz. In the midst of the frolic there came a loud ring of the doorbell, and placing her panting and protesting mother in the rocker just vacated, she vanished; and soon her voice was heard above, as she directed the placing of the luggage of the expected lodger.
The Smith family consisted of the mother, daughter and son, A few years before the opening of our story the father had died, leaving a delicate wife, a young daughter, and a son just ready to enter college; also a house in a respectable part of the South End of Boston, MA, with a heavy mortgage upon it. Like many colored men living in large cities, his life had been a continual struggle with poverty and hard work, combined with a desire for advancement for his children, and a clean, self-respecting citizenship for himself. Smith was a freeborn Southern Negro—a Virginian. His father had bought himself and married a free woman. After the birth of Henry his mother died; and when his father married again, his aunts brought him to the city of New Bedford, where he had imbibed, along with copious draughts of salt air, an unwavering desire for all the blessings of liberty, and strong notions that a man must depend upon himself in great measure and carve out his own fortune to the best of his ability with such tools as God had furnished him.
Henry Smith’s early manhood was spent upon the sea; and when he at last settled in Boston, he could converse about foreign ports and countries with the ease and familiarity of personal knowledge. Possessed of very little education, yet he concealed the fact admirably under a naturally intelligent manner. Soon after he ceased to follow the sea he married a handsome Mulattress from New Hampshire, and with her help saved a small sum of money—enough to make the first payment on a home; then began the struggle of their lives. The masses of the Negro race find for employment only
