“Yes, ‘tonight,’” mimicked the other. “The blacker the night, the greater the need of amusement. You go out too little.”

“Who gives the concert?”

“Well, it’s a new departure in the musical world; something Northerners know nothing of; but I who am a Southerner, born and bred, or as the vulgar have it, ‘dyed in the wool,’ know and understand Negro music. It is a jubilee concert given by a party of Southern colored people at Tremont Temple. I have the tickets. Redpath has them in charge.”

“Well, if you say so, I suppose I must.” Briggs did not seem greatly impressed.

“Coming down to the practical, Reuel, what do you think of the Negro problem? Come to think of it, I have never heard you express an opinion about it. I believe it is the only burning question in the whole category of live issues and ologies about which you are silent.”

“I have a horror of discussing the woes of unfortunates, tramps, stray dogs and cats and Negroes—probably because I am an unfortunate myself.”

They smoked in silence.

1 A storm happening near the time of the spring or autumnal equinox. However, the equinox was in September—the storms were hardly “lingering equinoctials” but rather early winter storms.

2 The book is fictitious, but the passage quoted here appears in William James’s 1890 essay “The Hidden Self” (not coincidentally the subtitle of this novel). James himself refers to “M. Binet,” the putative author of the fictional book, who is clearly the French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857–1911). Binet’s work On Double Consciousness also appeared in 1890 and undoubtedly influenced Hopkins. Binet is best remembered today as a pioneer in measuring intelligence, and the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales and the Simon-Binet test are still in use.

3 “Alma mater” means nourishing or benign mother; this is a fanciful phrase to describe the school.

4 Erebus is a Greek god, the personification of darkness or shadow.

CHAPTER II

THE passing of slavery from the land marked a new era in the life of the nation. The war, too, had passed like a dream of horrors, and over the resumption of normal conditions in business and living, the whole country, as one man, rejoiced and heaved a deep sigh of absolute content.