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7. THE FETE TERPSICHOREAN
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107 THE FETE TERPSICHOREAN. Chapter VII. Fraternity hall was a study on the evening of the banquet. As carriage after carriage drove up and their occupants alighted and tripped into the hall, they looked, and without doubt were, the equals in appointments and bearing of any Americans. The ladies were attired in evening costume; the men wore the conventional black. Here was to be seen the Afro-American at his best. The absence of flashy dress and cheap, showy jewelry, so often attributed to the Negro as a necessity on all public occasions , was nowhere to be seen. This is evidently not the class from which the usual American writer draws his characters, when moralizing upon the peculiarities of the Afro-American. The unprejudiced observer would have seen nothing in the appearance of the happy assembly congregated in Fraternity Hall, complexion excepted, to indicate that he was among a strange people. The banquet, in style and arrangements, was model of the highest rather than the lowest class of American affairs. The average Afro-American has little inclination to copy the pace of those of his own financial class, but at heart he is an aristocrat and imitates the bluest blood of the land. The ladies were there in all their glory, and as they promenade or whirl through the figures of the dance, what a picture for cosmopoly! Women as fair as the lily cling to the arms of their ebony Othello’s with an air of entire satisfaction. Here is seen in happy association the union of every family of men—an ocular demonstration of the fact that from one blood God hath made all the nations of the earth. The social standards adopted by these people and the link that holds together a race so varied in appearance and origin, is character. The mind, not the man; the heart, not the features. Nor does this distinction argue that all social lines in Afro-Amer- 108 j. mchenry jones ica are obliterated. Among these people, as elsewhere, the marks of class difference are severely drawn; but worth, not complexion, forms the barrier of demarcation. It is from the point of public observation that writers like W. D. Howells and others fall into excusable error. As all classes of Afro-Americans seem to mingle indiscriminately at public functions, it is often concluded that no line of separation exists. The initiated know better. It was noticeable on this occasion, as it is in all public gatherings, that the same persons made up a given set after each interval of the dance. There was indeed a change of partners, but no change of the company. Frequently one or two sets, by especial arrangement , interchanged partners. This then, is the fine shading of distinction unostentatiously made, that is entirely unnoticed by the casual observer. Each company of dancers form in themselves a social world undoubtedly satisfactory to themselves, but as free from invasion from without as if the dance was being conducted in a private parlor. Nothing is done or said which would lead a looker-on to suppose that a whit’s difference existed between any one of these sets and the score of others that surrounded them; but should someone beyond the pale of the social world attempt to inflict his company upon them, the dancers would become promenaders, and the dancing in that part of the hall become a thing of the past. The merrymakers were in the full tide of enjoyment when Lucile and Regenia, chaperoned by Mrs. Levitt, arrived at the hall. Clement St. John, seated in the balcony, for the first time during the conclave, was taking notes of the occasion. Notices of the banquet could not be copied from other papers. The racy descriptions of costumes and those who wore them required the skill of someone who not only viewed the proceedings, but enjoyed a personal acquaintance with the tastes and peculiarities of the persons described. He was well aware that the patrons of his paper would be more interested in a detailed account of the doings of the last evening than in all that preceded it. Lotus Stone, as if to make up for the time lost in the afternoon, was determined not to miss a number. After looking in vain for Lucile and Regenia, who were to come, by preference, under the care of Mrs. Levitt, Lotus had concluded that they would not be present , and giving wings to his longings entered heartily into...