Miss Palmer was buying a small home in one of the suburbs, and which was all she could boast of owning. As we know her, she secured her living by teaching nine months in the year, at forty dollars a month. And as we now know, she must perforce earn something during vacation, which was the real reason for selling Wyeth's book. So, from what we know of her, there is no reason why she should not have been conspicuous in colored society, since the masses, unfortunately, are all poor. Hence, wealth cannot be the dividing line, else there would be no society whatever. Miss Palmer showed more ostentation as their acquaintance lengthened. Sidney was now thirty; and since nineteen, he had lived on the western ranges. And, as is usually the case, western people are great readers. But here, his people did not read. Not that they could not do so, but because it was apparently not a preference; considering the fact that few seemed to care for much reading beyond a newspaper sensation. And, as he met the more elite, he was surprised that they paid so little attention to the condition of the masses. Murder, as we have seen, was an established habit. Of all those he had met, the teachers impressed Wyeth as having the least regard for conditions. In other words, "they never worried." They dressed the best their means would afford, and aped the rest, which was easy. And this he found so prevalent, that he was, at times, dreadfully bored by it all. But he was relieved when he looked deeper, to find that the people who were actually succeeding in doing something, paid little attention to this set, which dominated society. But the set claimed them, nevertheless. As he had known society from reading of it only, he had judged that literature was one of its chief features--but not so with this. Gossip and hearsay were more in keeping, and obviously more appreciated. Wyeth was a literary man now for the sake of gaining a livelihood; but he had studied it, as we know, from a modern point of view. He had never, however, any difference of opinion with them, for so few knew of the late books, purchased few, and most of them not any magazines of interest. Not one in a dozen even read the race's only periodical, _The Climax_: though the editor had once been one of them, and had written a book, a novel. It was a failure, from a financial point of view. The fiction they knew and talked of was in the order of Rip Van Winkle, Ben Hur and St. Elmo. One day, when arguments were abundant, it came to a point where Wyeth made mention of the fact that so few teachers showed any interest in current events; did not read the magazines, and Negro literature they almost held in contempt. "Is it because they feel that no Negro knows enough to write anything they would care to read?" "The idea," cried Miss Palmer, indignant. "All the teachers take the magazines, and as for Negro literature, it has been the teachers who have robbed themselves to make the same possible."