It
was interesting. Beneath her was an ordinary pretty ball--flowered,
silked, and ribboned; with swaying whirling figures, music, and
laughter, and all the human fun of gayety and converse.
And then she was impressed with the fact that this was no ordinary
scene; it was, on the contrary, most extraordinary.
There was a black man waltzing with a white woman--no, she was not
white, for Mary caught the cream and curl of the girl as she swept past:
but there was a white man (was he white?) and a black woman. The color
of the scene was wonderful. The hard human white seemed to glow and live
and run a mad gamut of the spectrum, from morn till night, from white to
black; through red and sombre browns, pale and brilliant yellows, dead
and living blacks. Through her opera-glasses Mary scanned their hair;
she noted everything from the infinitely twisted, crackled, dead, and
grayish-black to the piled mass of red golden sunlight. Her eyes went
dreaming; there below was the gathering of the worlds. She saw types of
all nations and all lands swirling beneath her in human brotherhood, and
a great wonder shook her. They seemed so happy. Surely, this was no
nether world; it was upper earth, and--her husband beckoned; he had been
laughing incontinently. He saw nothing but a crowd of queer looking
people doing things they were not made to do and appearing absurdly
happy over it.
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