In closing this page of "Shadow and Light" I am loath to believe that this extreme display of adverse feeling regarding the President's action in inviting Mr. Washington to dine with him, as shown in some localities, is fully shared by the best element of Southern opinion. Few Southern gentlemen of the class who so cheerfully pay the largest amount of taxation for the tuition of the Negro, give him employment and do much to advance him along educational and industrial lines, fear that the President's action will cause the obtrusion of his bronze pedals beneath their mahogany. Trusting that he will be inspired to foster those elements of character so conspicuous in Mr. Washington and that have endeared him to his broad-minded countrymen both North and South. The best intelligence, the acknowledged leaders of the race, are not only conservative along political lines, but are in accord with those who claim that social equality is not the creature of law, or the product of coercion, for, in a generic sense, there is no such thing as social equality. The gentlemen who are so disturbed hesitate, or refuse such equality with many of their own race; the same can be truthfully said of the Negro. Many ante-bellum theories and usages have already vanished under the advance of a higher civilization, but the "old grudge" is still utilized when truth and justice refuse their service. CHAPTER XXXII. Washington, the American "Mecca" for political worshipers, is a beautiful city, but well deserving its "nom de plume" as "the city of magnificent distances;" for any one with whom you have business seems to live five miles from every imaginable point of the compass; and should you be on stern business bent, distance will not "lend enchantment to the view." It is here that the patriot, and the mercenary, the ambitious and the envious gather, and where unity and divergence hold high carnival. Dramatists have found no better field for portraying the vicissitudes and uncertainties, the successes and triumphs of human endeavor. The ante-room to the President's office presents a vivid picture, as they wait for, or emerge from, executive presence, delineating the varied phases of impressible human nature--the despondent air of ill success; the pomp of place secured; the expectant, but hope deferred; the bitterness depicted in waiting delegations on a mission of opposition bent; the gleam of gladness on success; homage to the influential--all these figure, strut or bemoan in the ratio of a self-importance or a dejected mien. There is no more humorous reading, or more typical, than the ups and downs of office-seekers. Sometimes it is that of William the "Innocent," and often that of William the "Croker." The trials of "an unsuccessful," a prototype of "Orpheus C. Kerr," the nom de plume of that prince of writers, on this subject, is in place: Diary of an office-seeker, William the "Innocent":