Her purse, such thin thing as it was, had freely been at the service of Grover Cleveland’s election war-chest—but she never had received him. The successor in Union office of Abraham Lincoln could not visit Julia Townsend. But, beyond the stigma of “Union” the chief executive of these United States was sunk even lower in the proud, unwavering estimate of Julia Calhoun Townsend: on some days of his administration the President of the United States received—he had to—_any_ citizen who chose and made it convenient to file past him, had to receive and shake by the hand. President Cleveland might have no escape from shaking hands with his own negro coachman! True—Julia Townsend had lived and thrived for nine months at the breast of a negro woman, rather darker of skin, as it chanced, than Mr. Cleveland’s colored coachman—but that was different. It was _done_ in Virginia, and though Mrs. Townsend had cried her heart (and her rage) out on the same faithful black breast, she never had shaken hands with her; neither she nor any other Townsend had ever done such a thing—or could have done. You might (in her creed of caste) caress a negro, you could not greet one on such show of social parity as the shaking of hands implied; you might befriend them—clearly that was your duty, and no Townsend ever shirked a duty; you could accept their service to the last strain of their muscle, the last drop of red in their veins; even, if you were a man, you might mingle the blood in your blue veins with their blood—but you did not drink tea with them, or shake their hands. This last branch of the subject—perhaps most conveniently called the mulatto-quadroon-and-such branch, was one upon which Miss Townsend never spoke and preferred not to think; but she was quite familiar with it, and accepted it with a caste-complaisance that completely and permanently anesthetized, even if it had not killed, as probably it had, any moral revulsion, or, less than revulsion, criticism. She accepted it easily and naturally as she did all else that the “first families” had done since Raleigh named Virginia after Elizabeth until now, long after War’s terrible arbitrament had made the proud virgin state a desolation and a memory. At the thought that President Cleveland might have had to shake a negro “citizen” by the hand, her nostril quivered, her spleen rose, and her old soul stiffened. She pitied Mr. Cleveland—a man she respected for much—but the dire possible official necessity had made it forever impossible that Grover Cleveland’s hand should ever touch the hand of Julia Calhoun Townsend.