“I don’t know. When he does not appear at the established dinner hour I take it for granted that he is at the club in the city or dining with some of his newly made friends. He is quite popular here, being a Haitian himself,” replied the old gentleman. * * * * * It was late that night when Walter Burton entered the apartments reserved for his exclusive use in the house of John Dunlap. Throwing off his coat he sat down in a great easy chair in the moonlight by the open window and lighted a cigar. “I wish that I were free to fly to the mountains and hide myself here in Haiti among my own people forever,” sighed the young man glancing away off to the shadowy outline of the hills against the moonlit sky. “The sensation of being pitied is humiliating and hateful, and that was what I endured during the voyage from Boston, and have suffered ever since I arrived and have been in enforced association with the Dunlaps. The devoted love for Lucy, my wife, is a source of pain, not pleasure. Her unreasoning antipathy now is more bearable than will surely be the repulsion that must arise if, when restored to reason, she learn that I am the author of the cause of her disappointment, horror and dementia. Woe is mine under any circumstances! The evil consequences of attempted amalgamation of the negro and white races are not borne alone by the white participants but fall as heavily upon those of the negro blood who share in the abortive effort.” Burton seemed to ruminate for a long while, smoking in silence, then he muttered, “Am I much happier when with my own race? Hardly! When I am in the society of even the most highly cultivated Haitian negroes I am unable to free myself from the thought that we are much like a lot of monkeys, such as Italian street musicians carry with them. We negroes are togged out in the dignity, education and culture of the white race, but we are only aping the natural, self-evolved civilization and culture of the whites. The clothing does not fit us, the garments were not cut according to our mental and moral measurements, and we appear ridiculous when we don the borrowed trappings of the white race’s mind, and pompously strut before an amused and jeering world.” “When I imagined the mantle that I wore was my own it set lightly and comfortably on me. Now that I realize that it is the property of another, it has become cumbersome, unwieldy, awkward and is slipping rapidly from my shoulders.” “On the other side of the subject are equal difficulties. If, weary of imitation and affectation, I seek the society of my race in all its natural purity and ignorance, my senses have become so acute, softened and made tender by the long use of my borrowed mantle that I am shocked, horrified or disgusted. Oh! Son of Ham, escape from the doom pronounced against you while yet time was new seems impossible. In My Book it is writ, saith the Lord!”