successful examination, and was to graduate from the normal school, and
as a matter of course, her neighbors wanted to hear Annette "speak her
piece" as they called the commencement theme, and also to see how she
was going to behave before all "them people." They were, generally
speaking, too unaspiring to feel envious toward any one of their race
who excelled them intellectually, and so there was little or no jealousy
of Annette in Tennis Court; in fact some of her neighbors felt a kind of
pride in the thought that Tennis Court would turn out a girl who could
stand on the same platform and graduate alongside of some of their
employers' daughters. If they could not stand there themselves they were
proud that one of their race could.

"I feel," said one, "like the boy when some one threatened to slap off
his face who said 'you can slap off my face, but I have a big brother
and you can't slap off his face;'" and strange as it may appear, Annette
received more encouragement from a class of honest-hearted but ignorant
and well meaning people who knew her, than she did from some of the most
cultured and intelligent people of A.P. Nor was it very strange; they
were living too near the poverty, ignorance and social debasement of the
past to have developed much race pride, and a glowing enthusiasm in its
progress and development. Although they were of African descent, they
were Americans whose thoughts were too much Americanized to be wholly
free from imbibing the social atmosphere with which they were in
constant contact in their sphere of enjoyments. The literature they read
was mostly from the hands of white men who would paint them in any
colors which suited their prejudices or predilections. The religious
ideas they had embraced came at first thought from the same sources,
though they may have undergone modifications in passing through their
channels of thought, and it must be a remarkable man or woman who thinks
an age ahead of the generation in which his or her lot is cast, and who