"Now, mamma, did you ever think THAT of Erma Wysong? After her poor mamma and papa, both of whom are now dead, worked so hard to educate her, she is going to throw that education away in the washtub, in the kitchen, or rolling some white woman's baby about. If her dead mother only knew how Erma was about to disgrace her education, she could not rest easy in her grave. Of course there is no other kind of work open for her to do just now, but if she had only held herself up for two or three years, she might have gotten a school to teach when some of the other teachers died or got married. But as it is, she has just gone and ruined herself forever. Well, mamma, I promise you faithfully that while you are alive, and after you are dead, I'll starve before I bring disgrace upon the education which you and papa have worked so hard to give me. I'll never throw my education away by bending over a washtub or by moving about in a white man's kitchen. No, indeed! Depend upon that, mamma, you dear, kind mamma," said Margaret, with many an emphatic toss of her head. She gave her mamma a resounding kiss, and leaving the much overburdened woman in the midst of huge piles of clothes, she went to renew her gossip with Ellen. "What does your mamma think of it, Margaret," asked Ellen. "Oh, mamma was just so struck that she could not say a word. It is just dreadful. Why, it will have a tendency to stop parents from educating their children, if they are to act like that," remarked Margaret. "Yes," joined in Ellen, "and it might make some of our weak-minded parents think that we educated girls ought to cook and wash clothes and scrub floors at home." "That would be too horrid. Why, we would then be no higher in life than our slave time mothers who did such work. White girls occupying the social station in their race that we do in our race would suffer themselves to be carried out of their homes dead before they would perform such menial tasks. And, Ellen, we must hold up our race just as they do their race. Why, just think, if we educated girls go to work, it can be truthfully said that our race has no first-class society." "Margaret, the more I think of what Erma has done, the worse I feel. Let us go out and tell all the other educated girls about it before any of them chance to meet Erma and speak to her as cordially as ever. She is the first Negro girl that has disgraced her education by offering to go to work, and we must all pounce down upon her so fast and hard that she will be the last; all of our set must snub her right and left. It may bring her to her senses, too." "That is a capital idea, Ellen! Let us get ready at once." So saying, they went to their respective rooms, dressed themselves in the finest articles of wear in their wardrobes, and sallied forth to spread everywhere the news of the _disgrace_, as they termed it, of their classmate.