United States or Sudan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He came to us much flurried one night and got us to help him with a memorial to the absentee proprietor, telling of the wild and gay doings of midnights in the rooms and corridors among "tired" business men and their prostitutes. We listened wide-eyed and eager and wrote the filth out manfully. The proprietor did not thank Fortson. He did not even answer the letter.
Once, and once only, I felt the sting of its talons. I was twenty and had graduated from Fisk with a scholarship for Harvard; I needed, however, travel money and clothes and a bit to live on until the scholarship was due. Fortson was a fellow-student in winter and a waiter in summer.
I did not look his way again. Then and there I disowned menial service for me and my people. I would work my hands off for an honest wage, but for "tips" and "hand-me-outs," never! Fortson was a pious, honest fellow, who regarded "tips" as in the nature of things, being to the manner born; but the hotel that summer in other respects rather astonished even him.
He proposed that the Glee Club Quartet of Fisk spend the summer at the hotel in Minnesota where he worked and that I go along as "Business Manager" to arrange for engagements on the journey back. We were all eager, but we knew nothing of table-waiting. "Never mind," said Fortson, "you can stand around the dining-room during meals and carry out the big wooden trays of dirty dishes.
Word Of The Day