Before going to Liverpool we stopped with my husband's people and I never put in a more dreadful time. They [104] were nice, kind, good and worthy, but I had never before eaten with people of that caliber, or slept in a house of that kind, or eaten my meals in a "parlour" or lived in a house with no servants. I was terrified of them and they were more terrified of me, though kind of proud that Walter had done so well for himself. In justice to Walter Evans, I think that I should say that after we had separated and he had gone to one of our great universities for a postgraduate course, I received a letter from the president of the university begging me to return to Walter. He pleaded with me (as a very old and experienced man) to go back to my husband because, he stated, never in the course of his long experience with thousands of young men had he met a man as gifted - spiritually, physically and mentally - as Walter Evans. It was not surprising, therefore, that I had fallen in love and married him. All the indications were good except his social setting and lack of money, but as I was going to America to live and as he was shortly to be ordained in the Episcopal Church that did not seem to matter. We could manage on his stipend and my small income.

We went straight from England to Cincinnati, Ohio, where my husband was studying at the Lane Theological Seminary. I immediately set in and took his various courses with him, whilst the money which I had supported both of us and paid all expenses. I found when it came down to the details of married life that I had absolutely nothing in common with my husband, except on religious views. He knew nothing really of my background and I knew less of his. We both tried at this time to make a success of our marriage, but it was a failure. I think I would have died of misery and despair had it not been for the colored woman who ran the boarding-house, connected with the seminary, on the top floor of which we had one room. Her name was Mrs. Snyder and she adopted me on sight. She nursed me [105] and petted me and took care of me; she scolded me and she fought for me and, for some reason, she hated the sight of Walter Evans and took pleasure in telling him so. She saw to it that I had the best that it was in her power to provide. I loved her and she was my one confidante.

It was then, for the first time in my life, I came up against the racial problem. I had no anti-Negro feeling, except that I did not believe in marriage between the colored races and the white for it never seemed to work for happiness on either side. I was appalled to discover that under the American constitution we stood for equality for all men but that (through the poll tax and poor education) we most carefully saw to it that the Negro was not equal. Things are better in the North than in the South but the Negro problem is one that the American people will have to solve. The Constitution has already solved it for them. I remember at Lane Theological Seminary a Negro professor, a Doctor Franklin, had been invited to give the alumni address. After we came out of the chapel, I was standing with my husband and a couple of professors talking about the beautiful address we had had when Dr. Franklin passed by. One of the professors stopped him and handed him money to go and buy his lunch. He was not even good enough to eat with all the rest of us, though he could speak to us on the spiritual values. I was so horrified that, with my usual impetuosity, I rushed off to a professor and his wife whom I knew and told them about it. They immediately came back with me and took Dr. Franklin to their own home for lunch. The discovery of the anti-Negro feeling was like discovering an open door into the great house of humanity. Here was a whole section of my fellowmen who were being refused the rights of the Constitution under which they had been born.