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Just before leaving, he wrote to Davis.

“My dear Webb!” the letter ran, “you, after all, were right. We have little or no show in the fight for life among these people. I have struggled for two years here at Broughton, and now find myself back where I was when I first stepped out of school with a foolish faith in being equipped for something. One thing, my eyes have been opened anyway, and I no longer judge so harshly the shiftless and unambitious among my people. I hardly see how a people, who have so much to contend with and so little to hope for, can go on striving and aspiring. But the very fact that they do, breeds in me a respect for them. I now see why so many promising young men, class orators, valedictorians and the like fall by the wayside and are never heard from after commencement day. I now see why the sleeping and dining-car companies are supplied by men with better educations than half the passengers whom they serve. They get tired of swimming always against the tide, as who would not? and are content to drift.

“I know that a good many of my friends would say that I am whining. Well, suppose I am, that’s the business of a whipped cur. The dog on top can bark, but the under dog must howl.

“Nothing so breaks a man’s spirit as defeat, constant, unaltering, hopeless defeat. That’s what I’ve experienced. I am still studying law in a half-hearted way for I don’t know what I am going to do with it when I have been admitted. Diplomas don’t draw clients. We have been taught that merit wins. But I have learned that the adages, as well as the books and the formulas were made by and for others than us of the black race.

“They say, too, that our brother Americans sympathize with us, and will help us when we help ourselves. Bah! The only sympathy that I have ever seen on the part of the white man was not for the negro himself, but for some portion of white blood that the colored man had got tangled up in his veins.

“But there, perhaps my disappointment has made me sour, so think no more of what I have said. I am going now to do what I abhor. Going South to try to find a school. It’s awful. But I don’t want any one to pity me. There are several thousands of us in the same position.

“I am glad you are prospering. You were better equipped than I was with a deal of materialism and a dearth of ideals. Give us a line when you are in good heart.

“Yours, HALLIDAY.

“P.S.–Just as I finished writing I had a note from Judge Featherton offering me the court messengership at five dollars a week. I am twenty-five. The place was held before by a white boy of fifteen. I declined. ‘Southward Ho!'”

Davis was not without sympathy as he read his friend’s letter in a city some distance away. He had worked in a hotel, saved money enough to start a barber-shop and was prospering. His white customers joked with him and patted him on the back, and he was already known to have political influence. Yes, he sympathized with Bert, but he laughed over the letter and jingled the coins in his pockets.

“Thank heaven,” he said, “that I have no ideals to be knocked into a cocked hat. A colored man has no business with ideals–not in this nineteenth century!”