The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
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CHAPTER VIII
FAR DOWN THE PACIFIC--THE PROPOSAL
After the presidential election of that year I went to South Americawith a special party, consisting mostly of New York capitalists andmillionaires. We traveled through the southwest, crossing the Rio Grandat Eagle Pass, and on south by the way of Toreon, Zacatecas, AguasCalientes, Guadalajara, Puebla, Tehauntepec and to the southwest coast,sailing from Salina Cruz down the Pacific to Valparaiso, Chile, goinginland to Santiago, thence over the Trans-Andean railway across theAndes, and onward to the western plateau of Argentina.
Arriving at the new city of Mendoza, we visited the ruins of the ancientcity of the same name. Here, in the early part of the fifteenth century,on a Sunday morning, when a large part of the people were at church, anearthquake shook the city. When it passed, it left bitter ruin in itswake, the only part that stood intact being one wall of the church. Of apopulation of thirteen thousand, only sixteen hundred persons escapedalive. The city was rebuilt later, and at the time we were there it wasa beautiful place of about twenty-five thousand population. At thisplace a report of bubonic plague, in Brazil, reached us. The partybecame frightened and beat it in post haste back to Valparaiso, settingsail immediately for Salina Cruz, and spent the time that was scheduledfor a tour of Argentina, in snoopin' around the land of the Montezumas.This is the American center of Catholic Churches; the home of many gaudySpanish women and begging peons; where the people, the laws, and thecustoms, are two hundred years behind those of the United States. Still,I thought Mexico very beautiful, as well as of historical interest.
One day we journeyed far into the highlands, where lay the ancientMexican city of Cuernavaca, the one time summer home of America's onlyEmperor, Maximilian. From there we went to Puebla, where we saw the oldCathedral which was begun in 1518, and which at that time was said to bethe second largest in the world. We saw San Louis Potosi, and Monterey,and returned by the way of Loredo, Texas. I became well enoughacquainted with the liberal millionaires and so useful in serving theirfamilies that I made five hundred and seventy-five dollars on the trip,besides bringing back so many gifts and curiosities of all kinds that Ihad enough to divide up with a good many of my friends.
Flushed with prosperity and success in my undertakings since leavingSouthern Illinois less than three years before, I went to M--boro to seemy sister and to see whether Miss Rooks had grown any. I was received asa personage of much importance among the colored people of the town, whowere about the same kind that lived in M--pls; not very progressive,excepting with their tongues when it came to curiosity and gossip. Iarrived in the evening too late to call on Miss Rooks and having becomequite anxious to see her again, the night dragged slowly away, and Ithought the conventional afternoon would never come again. Her father,who was an important figure among the colored people, was a mail carrierand brought the mail to the house that morning where I stopped. Helooked me over searchingly, and I tried to appear unaffected by hisscrutinizing glances.
By and by two o'clock finally arrived, and with my sister I went to makemy first call in three years. I had grown quite tall and rugged, and Iwas anxious to see how she looked. We were received by her mother whosaid: "Jessie saw you coming and will be out shortly." After a while sheentered and how she had changed. She, too, had grown much taller and wasa little stooped in the shoulders. She was neatly dressed and wore herhair done up in a small knot, in keeping with the style of that time.She came straight to me, extended her hand and seemed delighted to seeme after the years of separation.
After awhile her mother and my sister accommodatingly found an excuse togo up town, and a few minutes later with her on the settee beside me, Iwas telling of my big plans and the air castles I was building on thegreat plains of the west. Finally, drawing her hand into mine andfinding that she offered no resistance, I put my arm around her waist,drew her close and declared I loved her. Then I caught myself and darednot go farther with so serious a subject when I recalled the wild,rough, and lonely place out on the plains that I had selected as a home,and finally asked that we defer anything further until the claim on theLittle Crow should develop into something more like an Illinois home.
"O, we don't know what will happen before that time," she spoke for thefirst time, with a blush as I squeezed her hand.
"But nothing can happen," I defended, nonplused, "can there?"
"Well, no," she answered hesitatingly, leaning away.
"Then we will, won't we?" I urged.
"Well, yes", she answered, looking down and appearing a trifle doubtful.I admired her the more. Love is something I had longed for more thananything else, but my ambition to overcome the vagaries of my race byaccomplishing something worthy of note, hadn't given me much time toseek love.
I went to my old occupation of the road for awhile and spent most of thewinter on a run to Florida, where the tipping was as good as it had beenon the run from St. Louis to New York. However, about a month before Iquit I was assigned to a run to Boston. By this time I had seen nearlyall the important cities in the United States and of them all noneinterested me so much as Boston.
What always appeared odd to me, however, was the fact that the passengeryards were right at the door of the fashionable Back Bay district onHuntington Avenue, near the Hotel Nottingham, not three blocks fromwhere the intersection of Huntington Avenue and Boylston Street form anacute angle in which stands the Public Library, and in the oppositeangle stands Trinity Church, so thickly purpled with aristocracy and thememory big with the tradition of Philip Brooks, the last of that groupof mighty American pulpit orators, of whom I had read so much. A littlefarther on stands the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The mornings I spent wandering around the city, visiting Faneuil Hall,the old State House, Boston commons, Bunker Hill, and a thousand otherreminders of the early heroism, rugged courage, and far seeing greatnessof Boston's early citizens. Afternoons generally found me on Tremont orWashington Street attending a matinee or hearing music. There once Iheard Caruso, Melba, and two or three other grand opera stars in thepopular Rigoletto Quartette, and another time I witnessed "Siberia" andthe gorgeous and blood-curdling reproduction of the Kishneff Massacre,with two hundred people on the stage. On my last trip to Boston I sawChauncy Olcott in "Terrence the Coach Boy", a romance of old Irelandwith the scene laid in Valley Bay, which seemed to correspond to theBack Bay a few blocks away.
Dear old Boston, when will I see you again, was my thought as the trainpulled out through the most fashionable part of America, so stately andso grand. Even now I recall the last trip with a sigh. If the LittleCrow, with Oristown as its gateway, was a land of hope; throughMassachusetts; Worcester, with the Polytechnic Institute arising in theback ground; Springfield, and Smith School for girls, Pittsfield,Brookfield, and on to Albany on the Hudson, is a memory never to beforgotten, which evolved in my mind many long years afterward, in myshack on the homestead.