not come through the mails, and the neglected correspondence
finally died a natural death.

There was one person in Watauga, however, to whom Mary Louise
wrote, and from whom she received letters regularly--Ulysses
Grant Payson, the washerwoman's son, with whom she had gone to
school. Grant Payson was a sober, ambitious, industrious fellow,
who seemed to feel from childhood the weight of responsibility
for his people. A widow's only boy, he had worked hard and
studied hard. With a very fair mental endowment, he was able to
get what the Watauga public schools could give him, secure a few
years training at Nashville, then read law.

And, when, after her graduation, Mary Louise returned to her
father's home, a very well-educated young lady indeed, wearing
glasses and looking older than her years, she found Grant
established in a good practice, and with some other prospects
that were, for a colored man, flattering. Both families knew that
Grant wanted Ma'Lou. Whether the girl would marry him and settle
down in Watauga had been a matter of anxiety, often talked over
between the two mothers. For they also knew of and discussed
Ma'Lou's opportunity to take a position as private secretary to
one of the instructors in her college. They understood that it
was a situation which would pay fairly well, and give her
associates who gained an added glory in the minds of these humble
folk by their distance. In short, it would be a foothold in the
white people's world; and Grant Payson's mother trembled for her
son, while the mother of Mary Jackson feared to lose, once for
all, her daughter. The two Southern-bred black women could see in
such things as the girl reported only the wiping out of all race