There was more than hope in these eyes: Byron noted the generally gay insouciance, the careless, carefree manner of these servant-girls, these stevedores and messenger boys. They had a life and independence of their own, that no amount of hardship could take from them. On the whole they were happier, he was sure, than white servant-girls ever could be, doomed, as they were, to drudgery from early morning until they went to bed late at night. Every evening these race sisters of his returned to their families, to their daddies; they refused to "live in." The white world might do its best to rob their days of pleasure, but they could always look forward to the evening.
Byron passed a cabaret that was just closing. Out of the sleepy, yawning jaw of the dive, they came, these young men and women who had been dancing the night through. They, too, joined the procession. They had had no sleep. After a night devoted to gaiety they were returning to take their places as pawns in this strange game of toil that the white world insisted upon playing.
We should all of us be singing, Byron thought, and he wondered what would be appropriate. Onward, Christian Soldiers? Smiling, he rejected Sullivan's hymn. Something of our own: perhaps Walk together, children! Only, he added to himself, we so seldom do walk together in spirit.
Byron had never lived in or visited the South and therefore had never seen a Jim Crow car in his life,
