The Conquest: The Story of a Negro PioneerMicheaux, Oscar
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The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
Micheaux, Oscar
African American pioneers -- Fiction; Autobiographical fiction; South Dakota -- Fiction; Western stories
They had a daughter whom I had known as a child back in the home town
M--plis, where she had cousins that she used to visit. She had by this
time grown into a woman of five and twenty. Her name was Daisy Hinshaw.
Now Miss Hinshaw was not very good-looking but had spent years in school
and in many ways was unlike the average colored girl. She was attentive
and did not have her mind full of cheap, showy ideals. I had written to
her at times from South Dakota and she had answered with many inviting
letters. Therefore, when I wrote her from New York that I intended
paying her a visit, she answered in a very inviting letter, but boldly
told me not to forget to bring her a nice present, that she would like a
large purse. I did not like such boldness. I should have preferred a
little more modesty, but I found the purse, however, a large seal one in
a Fifth Avenue shop, for six dollars, which Miss Hinshaw displayed with
much show when I came to town.
The town had a colored population of about one thousand and the many
girls who led in the local society looked enviously upon Miss Hinshaw's
catch--and the large seal purse--and I became the "Man of the Hour" in
C--dale.
The only marriageable man in the town who did not gamble, get drunk and
carouse in a way that made him ineligible to decent society, was the
professor of the colored school. He was a college graduate and received
sixty dollars a month. He had been spoiled by too much attention,
however, and was not an agreeable person.
Miss Hinshaw was dignified and desired to marry, and to marry somebody
that amounted to something, but she was so bold and selfish. She took a
delight in the reports, that were going the rounds, that we were
engaged, and I was going to have her come to South Dakota and file on a
Tipp County homestead relinquishment that I would buy, and we would then
get married.
The only objector to this plan was myself. I had not fallen in love with
Miss Hinshaw and did not feel that I could. Daisy was a nice girl,
however, a little odd in appearance, having a light brown complexion,
without color or blood visible in the cheeks; was small and bony; padded
with so many clothes that no idea of form could be drawn. I guessed her
weight at about ninety pounds. She had very good hair but grey eyes,
that gave her a cattish appearance.
She had me walking with her alone and permitted no one to interfere. She
would not introduce me to other girls while out, keeping me right by her
side and taking me home and into her parlor, with her and her alone, as
company.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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