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Where the negro often fails is in lack of reliability, regularity, and faithfulness. In some occupations he is losing ground. Not many years ago barbers, waiters, and hotel employees in the South usually were negroes, but they have lost their monopoly in all these occupations. White men are taking their place as barbers and white girls now often serve in dining-rooms and on elevators.
But how can youth think seriously? And there had come to him this absurd, this fantastical conceit. What else would have come? The more seriously he took the tonsorial art, the more he studied its tricks and phrases and heard old barbers lecture, the more sure were the imps of youth to prompt him to laughter and urge him to something outrageous and ridiculous.
Dr Porhoët took his book from Miss Boyd and opened it thoughtfully. He read out the fine passage from the preface of the Paragranum: 'I went in search of my art, often incurring danger of life. I have not been ashamed to learn that which seemed useful to me even from vagabonds, hangmen, and barbers.
He could not account for it by any process of reasoning, and was simply obliged to accept the fact and give up trying to solve the riddle. He found himself dragged into society and courted, wondered at and envied very much as if he were one of those foreign barbers who flit over here now and then with a self-conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd daughter.
The truth is, as I believe I have since found out, that they have no barber shops worthy of the name in Paris and no barbers, either, for that matter. The impostor who does duty as a barber brings his pans and napkins and implements of torture to your residence and deliberately skins you in your private apartments.
Next comes the "grande entrée," which comprizes the grand chamberlain, the grand master and master of the wardrobe, the first gentlemen of the bed-chamber, the dukes of Orleans and Penthièvre, some other highly favored seigniors, the ladies of honor and in waiting of the queen, mesdames, and other princesses, without enumerating barbers, tailors, and various descriptions of valets.
"Bring him this evening, Mustapha; we will smoke a pipe, and listen to them; I'm very fond of stories they always send me to sleep." The business of the day was transacted with admirable precision and despatch by the two quondam barbers, who proved how easy it is to govern, where there are not "three estates" to confuse people.
What one experiences in a barber's shop the first time he enters one is what he always experiences in barbers' shops afterward till the end of his days. I got shaved this morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I approached it from Main a thing that always happens.
For instance, it was a proud thing to be of the crew of such stately craft as the 'Aleck Scott' or the 'Grand Turk. Negro firemen, deck hands, and barbers belonging to those boats were distinguished personages in their grade of life, and they were well aware of that fact too. A stalwart darkey once gave offense at a negro ball in New Orleans by putting on a good many airs.
Swarms of Northern adventurers went down to the Southern States, organized the ignorant negro voters, constructed State constitutions to suit themselves, got themselves elected to all the chief offices, plundered the State treasuries, contracted huge State debts, and stole the proceeds in connivance with legislatures composed mainly of negroes, of whom the most intelligent and instructed had been barbers and hotel-waiters.
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