Windham County reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1901-1906, 1905-01-06

idea OF Its extent may be formed
; The public reading room, open TO all
under proper restrictions. contains O
copy OF all the leading newspapers
periodicals and magazines of the
world. as fast as issued Try TO con-
ceive of such an intellectual feast
The building, library and reading
room, Is open to the public from an
early hour In the morning until IL D.
m, every week day and from noon to
III r. m. every Sunday, and Is contin-
uaHy thronged. This Is good place
TO say that In the vocabulary of the
real Washingtonlan there Is no such
thing as forenoon and afternoon.
Morning" lasts until p, m, and
then evening begins. In no other
way is the time Of day ever referred
| to.
The real Washingtonan, the life
long resident, is nearly always i
southerner, originating In the adjoin-
ing states Of Maryland or Virginia or
further south. He is usually proud
to call himself a descendant of an old
'Ferginny" family once very wealthy
but knocked out by the war Thou
sands of women Of uncertain age,
widows, more or less. run boarding
houses. rent rooms, and all tell the
same story. They are the daughters
of a once wealthy "Ferginny" family,
wrecked by the war and since In "re-
duced circumstances" AS Private
Mulvaney says: Il was corporal
/ was corporal wanst!" And so
with them. They are ladies and aris-
tocrats every last one OF them, but
''rejuced." A fixture In every board
ing house Is an ancient coored wo-
man, badly crippled by rheumatic
and so-called religion, who neverthe-
less manages to do all the work there
is done about the house, with some
times the aid of a dusky damsel to
walt on table and do errands. The
true southerner "rejuced." will fall
over dirt and rubbish and sweetiy al
low the whole outfit to moulder into
decay before lifting a finger TO pre-
vent That is work for the colored |
person, and if the C. p. doesn't get |
around in the course of year or two |
TO connect with the difficulty. 1t goes |
OF course there is once
i'm while a good. neat, energetic
who came down to earth
from "Ferginny," but the type Is as
have given it. The true bred in
e-bone Virginian knows of no coun-
Try north of "Baltimo' and west of
The Ohio river A Yankee he con-
'iders an evil outgrowth of foreign
and, although he is in
sense reconciled-as the old lady
vas to dying-he never will quite
'orgive The Almighty for allowing
Grant to round up Robert E. Lee.
The city has now nearly 100000
population, of which about 10000 are
legroes of various shades. There are
more colored people residing in this )
ity than there are in any state in !
he union or in any other one city or :
ountry in the world. Practically :
very third person one meets here is :
olored, and sometimes II seems as ,
they all were. And a remarkable =
hing about it is that the darker the
nan is, the more his name is likely
D be white" coal-black negro
lily or Blanche White. That is, IL e
er name isn't Esmeralda Johnson b
here are 1880 Johnsons in the city, a
lree -fourths of whom are colored r.
few are christened o
gorge Washington, as they all were Il
ice. and George is evidently losing 81
lste. There are $4,000 Smiths in the
ty. leading the directory, only a few
whom are colored. Next to the
ohnsons and very close are the ~
rowns-more than half very brown. =;
A bright, reliable, and well-behaved n
'lored person-and there are thou y.
nds of them-is as good citizen ,,
white man. A colored person =,
no insists on doing or being some %,
ing which neither common sense .
n education allows him to do or az
Is either a pestiferous nuisance or w
dangerous brute. There are also al
any of him. Possibly all this can 10
so be said of white people, and | en-
vent solved the colored problem, Ga Ga
ter all. J. T.. Harris. W