"I'm with you. You must let me plan with you. But I can't plan with a
few of you, when the rest don't care. I want you all."
When the evening was over, and I had found those I knew and met those
whom I didn't know, and had set down my name with the list that grew
before the door, made up of those who were willing "not to fight, but to
help," I stood for a minute in the lower hallway with Rose.
"Oh, Cosma," she said, "I've got to tell you something. I done you dead
wrong. I thought last night that you'd gone over--that you didn't care
any more."
"I didn't," I said. "It _had_ got me--the thing that gets folks."
Next day I rehearsed my oration for the Savage Prize contest. When I'd
finished, Miss Spot told me that I needn't practise it any more before
her--just to say it over in my room through the three days until the
contest was to take place.
"You deliver it as well as I could myself, Cosma," she said.
So I walked back to my room, tore up my oration, and set to work to
write another. My head and my heart were full of what that other was to
be. I had been beating and pricking with it all night long after the
meeting.
Savage Prize Day was a great day at the school. We were given engraved
invitations to send out. I sent mine to Mrs. Bingy and Rose and the
girls in the factory. I knew they couldn't come; but I knew, too, they'd
like getting something engraved. Only it happened that not only Mrs.
Bingy came--Rose and the girls came, too. Handed to them with their pay
envelope had been the notice to quit. Somebody had told the
superintendent about that meeting. Six of the leaders were let out. I
saw them all sitting there when I got up on the platform. And they gave
me strength, there in all that lot of well-dressed, soft-voiced folks.
They were dear people, too. Only they were dear, different. And they
didn't understand anything whatever about life, the way Mrs. Bingy and
Rose and I did. And that wasn't those folks' fault either. But they
seemed to take credit for it.
Antoinette had an oration. Hers was on "Our Boat Is Launched; But
Where's the Shore?" It told about how to do. It said everybody should be
successful with hard work. It said that industry is the best policy and
bound to win. It said that America is the land where all who will only
work hard enough may have any position they like. It said that
everything is possible. Everybody enjoyed Antoinette's oration. She had
some lovely roses and violets, and all her relatives sat looking so
pleased. Her father had promised her a diamond pendant, if she got the
prize.
There was another on "Evolution." She said we should be patient and not
hurry things, because short-cuts wasn't evolution. I wondered what made
her take it for granted God is so slow. But I liked the way her
bracelets tinkled when she raised her arm, and I think she did, too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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