in quarrels and contentions, which, while it never resulted in blood,
sadly lowered the tone of social life. It was the arena of wordy strife
in which angry tongues were the only weapons of warfare, and poor little
Annette was fast learning their modes of battle. But there was one thing
against which grandmother Harcourt set her face like flint, and that was
sending children to saloons for beer, and once she flamed out with
righteous indignation when one of her neighbors, in her absence, sent
Annette to a saloon to buy her some beer. She told her in emphatic terms
she must never do so again, that she wanted her girl to grow up a
respectable woman, and that she ought to be ashamed of herself, not only
to be guzzling beer like a toper, but to send anybody's child to a
saloon to come in contact with the kind of men who frequented such
places, and that any women who sent their children to such places were
training their boys to be drunkards and their girls to be
street-walkers. "I am poor," she said, "but I mean to keep my credit up
and if you and I live in this neighborhood a hundred years you must
never do that thing again."

Her neighbor looked dazed and tried to stammer out an apology, but she
never sent Annette to a beer saloon again, and in course of time she
became a good temperance woman herself, influenced by the faithfulness
of grandmother Harcourt.

The court in which Mrs. Harcourt lived was not a very desirable place,
but, on account of her color, eligible houses could not always be
obtained, and however decent, quiet or respectable she might appear on
applying for a house, she was often met with the rebuff, "We don't rent
to colored people," and men who virtually assigned her race the lowest
place and humblest positions could talk so glibly of the degradation of
the Negro while by their Christless and inhuman prejudice they were