“What’s his gag, pardner?” asked Banjo.

“He’s a regular guy. I just got a hundred francs outa him.”

“How come? Why didn’t you put me next, too? Is he rough-trade business?”

“Oh no! They’re bums just like us⁠—he and his friend. You know I don’t pal around with rough-trade business, though I appreciate them.”

“Youse one nuts of a black beggar, pardner. But wha’d’y’u mean bums like we is? You ain’t telling me they ain’t sitting on an independent bank roll?”

“No, they ain’t. They’re dickey bums, just panhandling through life like us, without any ambition for a steady job. But they only bum the swells. The one that just left us pulls the gentleman stuff, and his partner hands them the raw colonial brass. It’s the gentleman stuff that does the best business, however.”

“Gawd-an-his-chilluns! What a wul’! But how they make it, all dressed up fine and dandy like that?”

“Why, Banjo, you stiff poker! That’s the best way to bum among swell people. The sprucer you are and the slicker your tongue, the surer your chances. Why, those fellows make a thousand francs when we can only make five. When one of those fellows bums a tourist, he’ll feel ashamed if he can’t hand him a fifty or a hundred franc note, the same way you and I feel ashamed when a bum singer does his stuff in a bistro and we haven’t got a copper to put in the hat. Well, it was a lucky thing I bumped into him and got this hundred francs. I was jim-clean. Went up to the agency expecting a little dough from the States, but I didn’t get a cent. I would have had to spend tomorrow in coal or grain.”

“No, you wouldn’t, either, pardner. I got me two hundred francs.”

“And your suit out, too! How’d you makem?”

“Ways a doing it, pardner. Even you’ bestest friend you can’t let in on ehvery thing you do. Whenevah time youse jim-clean, though, don’t go making you’self blacker than you is working in the white man’s coal. Jest tell you’ pardner how you is fixed. I guess I c’n handle that coal better’n you kain.”

“But you don’t have to, mah boy. You’ve got your banjo to work for you.”

“And youse got you’ pen. I want you to finish that theah story you was telling about and read it to me. I think you’ll make a good thing of it. Ise a nigger with a long haid on me. I ain’t dumb like that bumpitter Goosey. I seen many somethings in mah life. Little things getting there and biggity things not getting anywhere. I done seen the wul’ setting in all pohsitions, haidways, sideways, horseways, backways, all ways. Ef I had some real dough I’d put it on you so you could have time to make good on that theah writing business.”

They did not find the other boys in the Joliette Square. They looked for them in the cafés of the place and spied them at last in a side street before a hotel restaurant where stranded sailors were always housed by the American consulate. Malty, Bugsy, Ginger, Goosey, Dengel, and the little Irish fellow. They formed a semicircle around a woman of average size.

It was a Negro woman, Banjo and Ray found, when they got up to them. She was brown like oak, and was wearing a nigger-brown skirt and a black blouse with white cuffs and collar, to which was attached a broad white tongue, and in her hand she held a Bible. She had that week arrived directly from New York and she was telling the boys about it.

“I got a message fwom the Lawd. He dreamed me in a vision and said, ‘Take up you’ Bible and hymnbook and go. Go far and fureign to a place fohgot of Gawd whar theah’s many black folks and white folkses all homeward bound for hell.’ And I told that message to the sistahs and brotherin of mah chierch and we-all of us prayed ag’in, and that prayer was answered foh me to git ready and come along to this heah Marcelles, and heah I is.”

She showed Ray her American passport, in perfect order, visaed by the French consul in New York. “But did you know anything about Marseilles before?” he asked, feeling uneasy under her strange, holy-rolling eyes.

“Nosah, not a thing until the Lawd him dreamed me. And oh‑h‑h, how right it was! Oh‑h‑h, how right it was!” She clasped her hands and looked ecstatically to heaven. The boys glanced uncomfortably at one another and round about them. Was she going to throw that holy stuff right there?

“The Lawd dreamed me to come and warn yo’-all. I know why all you young niggers jest loves it so around heah without thinking a you’ souls’ salvation. I done seen it all the fust day I landed, mah chilluns. H‑m‑m‑m‑m! What a life! I ain’t blind, and ef I didn’t close mah eyes against sich a grand parade of sinfulness as I nevah seen befoh, it was because the Lawd done whisper to me: ‘Keep you’ eyes wide open, Sistah Geter, so you c’n see it all, and don’t miss anything that’ll make mah message the stronger.’ ”

No printed word could record the voluptuous sound of Sister Geter’s “H‑m‑m‑m‑m!” Banjo asked her how she had located Joliette and the Seamen’s Hotel, and she said the American consul had arranged it.

“The consul him send you heah foh preaching!” Banjo exclaimed.

“He done puts me heah foh bohd and lodging. He didn’t put me heah foh no preaching, for them’s jest as ungodly up theah in need a saving as yo’-all is down heah. I went straight up theah as I landed and jest’ lay mah Bible down on the desk befoh that high and mighty white man, and I told him that the Mightiest One had done send me on this jierny for to preach the gospel word.

“And he done started in to tell me that I’d had to go right on back home by the fust boat sailing, for Marcelles was no place for me. And don’t ask me ef I didn’t done get him told jest as Jesus wanted me to. I told him how he was in need a saving jest like anybody else, and that he was nothing more than a sinner, and that no pohsition wouldn’t nary save him even ef he was our own President hisself and not jest standing heah foh him same as the President is standing foh Gawd and our country.

“Yessah chilluns, I done gived him his share of the message same as yo’-all gwina git yours, foh Gawd is no respecter of high pohsitions, and befoh I done finish got him told I seen that the spirit had laid strong hands on him, for he was looking at mah papers and a counting mah money and gitting a man to come and fix me up heah whar I is.”

“But, ma,” said Ray, “if you’ve really come on salvation business, down here is too righteous for you. You should go up to the Bum Square where the world hangs out.”

“Sure. That’s the place. Tha’s the hell where all them li’l’ ofay devils am monkeying, ma,” Banjo declared in a rollicking, rakish accent.

“I’m scared they might grab me,” Sister Geter replied, inclining her head on her shoulder in a slightly suggestive way of worldliness, while a smile centering on her full brown nose brightened her features, and just for a moment she seemed flirtatious. Just for a moment, but it did not escape the prehensile sense of Banjo, who quickly nudged Ray behind and winked. But just as quickly also did Sister Geter become her missionary self again.

“Did you leavem all a you’ money up theah at the consulate, ma?” Ginger asked.

“Why, no. I done change a few dollars in them heah French francs to carry me along for a little while.”

“You know, ma,” said Ginger again, “wese all good boys. We all loves Big Massa Gawd and ain’t doing anything wicked, but wese jest stranded heah; can’t get a broa⁠—a boat; and wese always hard up and hungry, so ef you c’n hulp us out a li’l’ bit with a li’l’ money fust⁠—”

“Oh La‑a‑a‑awd! Save you’ poah chilluns Lawd, Lawd! Save them fwom sarving the devil and drifting to hell so far away from home, Lawd!”

Sister Geter had thrown the holy stuff, gagging Ginger before he could finish, and was performing on the pavement just as if she were back home in a Protestant revival state. She brought a crowd of French folk running up in no time. Shopkeepers, restaurateurs, bar people, chauffeurs, seamen, dockers, girls, and touts⁠—the colorful miscellany that makes the Place de la Joliette always a place of warm interest. And following the crowd, four policemen from the square were precipitating themselves toward the scene. The beach boys fled.

There were piles upon piles of boxes on the pier, and dozens of dockers were wheeling them across planks into the hold of the ship. Taxicabs dashed in with passengers, taxicabs dashed out, and taxicabs were waiting. Private detectives stood talking with port police, and black, brown, and white guides were buzzing about. White beach fellows prowled up and down in their smelly rags, looking up to the decks like hungry dogs. The black fellows, less forward, stood a little way off. Two white American sailors in sports clothes were conversing with a ship’s officer. One of them had been in hospital, the other had missed his ship, and both of them were being put up by the consulate against repatriation.

It was a splendid pattern of a ship, a much more impressive thing in its bigness than the memory of the President after whom it was named. Its world-touring passengers crowded the decks tier upon tier. There were elderly people who seemed not to be enjoying the trip, but there were many others, young men and women who were bubbling over with high spirits.

Over above them all, poised high up on the funnel of the great liner, was the brazen white sign of the dollar. It was some dockers pausing, pointing and spitting at it, that drew Ray’s attention as he stood at one side with his companions. And immediately, too, a reaction of disgust was registered in him. He could understand the men’s gesture and apprehend why that mighty $ stood out like a red challenge in the face of the obstreperous French bull.

Even though the name of the man who bossed the line was Dollar, thought Ray, it was at least bad taste for him to be sending that sign touring round the world in this new era of world finance. An idea flashed upon Ray, and for a moment he wondered if he could capitalize it by patenting a plan of giving the dollar lessons in diplomacy, but it was immediately driven from his mind by the charming voice of a young lady calling from the deck: “Boy! boy!”

She was gesturing toward the black boys, and they all started forward, but Bugsy was ahead of the others. She was a tall fair girl, between brunette and blond, and wore a reddish-gray traveling dress in which she was as striking as a Fifth Avenue shop’s cut of a French model.

“Boy,” she said, looking down on Bugsy, “are you from Dixie?”

“Yes, miss.”

“And the others, too?”

“Yes, miss, wese all Americans.”

“Listen at that nigger,” Banjo said to Ray, “playing straight for a handout.”

“I thought yo’-all were American boys,” said the girl. “But what yo’-all doing so far away from home?”

“We works on ship, miss,” said Bugsy; “we-all waiting on ship now.”

“Are yo’-all having a good time while you’re waiting?”

“Not so bad, miss, although wese all of us broke all the time.”

“Isn’t it wonderful!” she said, aloud, yet more to herself. “These cullud boys here just like they were back home!⁠ ⁠… Say, boy, will you get me a paper⁠—an American paper?”

But before Bugsy could say yes, a white South African fellow on the beach had put himself in front of him and offered his services.

“You want a paper, lady? I’ll get it and anything you want. I know the town better⁠—”

“She ain’t asting you foh nothing. It’s me she done ask!” Bugsy was up in the face of the little white, who was just his size, with twitching hands, his knuckles rapping his antagonist’s breast.

“Stand off, you bloody kaffir⁠—nigger!” said the white.

Bugsy palmed him full in the face. “You want fight? Fight, then.”

The South African staggered back a little, steadied himself, and came back at Bugsy. He was game for it. Bugsy ducked the drive to his jaw and closed in. With a swift movement of his right foot he sent the South African down on his back and was down upon him with fist and knee.

“That’s not fair fighting; that’s not fair,” the South African cried.

“Wha’s not fair? Ise fighting, tha’s what Ise doing,” retorted Bugsy.

Some dockers had gathered around, and one of them pulled Bugsy up. The South African, mad with anger, rushed him, but Bugsy stepped aside, and if it had not been for one of the large ropes attaching the ship to the pier, the white boy would have fallen into the water. He came back sparring at Bugsy, who maneuvered a clinch. The South African drove his fist low-down into Bugsy’s belly. Bugsy retaliated with a double butt. That broke off the clinch, and suddenly he dove down between the South African’s legs and, lifting him by the feet into the air, he sent him away off sprawling on his back. It was nothing less than a miracle that the boy’s skull missed the iron pillar on the pier. That ended the fight.

Bugsy looked toward the deck and saw not the fair passenger, but a Chinese cook in native dress of blue pantaloons and yellow jacket, with a large apple pie in his hand. To Bugsy’s surprise the Chinaman bared his Oriental teeth, rather dirty, and handed him the pie, patting him all the while on the shoulder:

“Tek pie. Me give. You fight good. Me love to see you fight like that. Tek pie.”

The Chinaman patted Bugsy again and hurried back with his quick jerky steps up the gangway, leaving him happy with his American pie, but still rather astonished by the gesture and not in the least understanding what it was all about.

The Irish boy was at Bugsy’s elbow. Bugsy turned to him.

“He say I don’t fight fair. Nuts! Fighting is fighting. In England when they oncet get you down they kick you all ovah. I didn’t even lift mah foot at him.”

The Irish boy laughed. “Don’t worry about him. Perhaps he had an idea you was putting on a sparring match for the benefit a them tourists.”

In the meantime Banjo had superseded Bugsy in the favor of the gracious young lady.

“I’ll get that theah paper for you,” Banjo said.

“Be sure you get American and not English,” she had moved a little down the gangway and pretended not to have seen the fight. She gave Banjo a dollar.

Banjo held the dollar in a tentative, humorous manner and said: “But I gotta go way up yonder uptown to get it, miss, and I’ll have to take a taxi, and that alone’ll cost a dollar.”

“Will it?” Her eyes took in Banjo’s strutting elegance in a swift glance. She smiled and said: “Well, here’s another dollar for yourself and five francs. You can get the paper with that. It’s all the French money I’ve got.⁠ ⁠… What part of the South you from?” she asked as Banjo reached for the money.

A moment’s hesitation, too slight for her to remark, and he said, “Norfolk, miss.”

“Norfolk! Why, I’m from Richmond and I know Norfolk very well. What part do you come from? I have relatives there. Do you know the Smith family?”

“Sure, miss. I useta work as a chauffeur foh one them. That they one was⁠ ⁠… he was⁠ ⁠… I think he was.⁠ ⁠…”

“Was it Mr. Charlie?”

“Egsactly, miss. I done drove Marse Charlie’s car and⁠—”

“Did you never hear him mention his cousins, the Joneses of Richmond?”

“Sure thing, miss. Him and his wife and all a the family was always talking about them Joneses. I knows Richmond mahself, miss. I useta live there on Wellington Street⁠—”

“Now isn’t it just too extraordinary for anything to see all you boys from back home here! How do you find it?”

“Tough enough, miss, while wese waiting to get a job on a ship, but sometimes fellahs like oursel’s working in our line will hulp us out some when a boat is in, and when it is a big liner like this we hang around for any little job going that a passenger might want done.”

“Give me back those two dollars.” The girl opened a richly-variegated bead bag and, taking the two dollars from Banjo, she handed him a five-dollar note, saying: “Divide that up among you-all and get me what papers you can with the five francs. Those published in Paris will do, but be sure they’re American.”

Banjo pulled his hat off and made a fine darky acknowledgment. The fight was finished. The girl, indicating the South African, asked, “Is he American, too?”

“No, miss,” replied Banjo, “he’s British.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, casually, and went back up on deck among the passengers, who had also followed the fight with neutral amusement.

On the l’Estaque road Banjo caught a tramcar going to Joliette. He boarded it and, arriving in the square he bought copies of the Paris editions of the New York Herald and the Chicago Tribune. He got another tramcar going back toward the pier, and thus eliminated taxicab fare. Five dollars at forty francs apiece to be divided up among us, he mused. That’ll give twenty-five francs apiece to mah buddies and fifty for this good-luck darky that done pulled the trick off.

After delivering the papers he caught the tramcar again and stopped off at a café on the Quai d’Arenc, where his pals were waiting for him. The Irish boy was not there. He also had struck something good and had taxied off with a passenger who wanted to be shown the quartier réservé.

The boys had already emptied a few bottles of wine, and Ray had paid for them before Banjo got there.

“Wha’ you wanta blow you’self foh?” Banjo demanded. “You know I’m the best plugger of the gang all this week, hitting nothing but bull’s-eye pim on the head ehvery time.”

He gave the boys twenty-five francs apiece. Dividing up was a beach boys’ rite. It didn’t matter what share of the spoils the lucky beggar kept for himself, so long as he fortified the spirit of solidarity by sharing some of it with the gang. The boys were hungry, and, besides the general handout, Banjo paid for some food. So much and so quickly did the boys eat, that the patronne had to send out for bread. Joined together were two long green tables of sausage and ham sandwiches, bottles of red wine, filled and half-filled glasses.

“Foh making grub palatable,” said Malty, “I ain’t seen no place equal to this that c’n do so much with a piece of meat and a li’l’ vegetable, ’cep’n’ it’s way home yonder where I was bohn; but⁠—”

“Don’t talk crap about home cooking in them monkey islands,” Banjo interrupted. “The onliest thwoat-tickling cooking like French cooking is black folks’ cooking back home in Dixie.”

“You don’t know anything about the West Indies, them, breddah,” said Malty. “Mah mudder could cook you a pot a rice and peas seasoned with the lean of corned pork that’d knock anything you got in Dixie stiff cold.”

“Chuts! Rice is coolie grub,” said Banjo. “I ain’t much on it ’cep’n when I want a change a chop suey. I would give all the rice and peas in the wul’ foh one good platter a corn pone and chicken⁠—”

“Corn pone!” sneered Malty. “Tha’s coon feeding⁠—”

“You said it, then,” cried Goosey, “and I wish yo-all would say corn bread instead of corn pone. Corn pone is so niggerish.”

“Mah mammy useta call it corn pone,” said Banjo, “and tha’s good enough foh me.”

“I was gwine ta say,” continued Malty, “that I had moh’n was good foh mah belly a that theah corn pone when I was way down in Charleston and Savannah, and it couldn’t hold a candle against our owna banana pone.”

“Banana-what-that?” exclaimed Banjo. “You mean banana fritters.”

“Not ef I knows it, buddy,” Malty laughed. “Banana fritters is made from ripe banana. But I said banana pone, which is made from green banana grated with coconut and spice and sugar and baked in banana leaf. I ain’t nevah find nothing moh palatable than that in any place in all the wul’. And that is black folks’ eating, too. You nevah find it on any buckra table.”

“I’ve eaten it,” said Ray. “It sure is great stuff.”

“Kuyah!” exclaimed Malty, happy to be backed up, “you eat it in Haiti, too.”

“Sure. And I ate it in Jamaica. I was there for two years when I was a kid. We had a little revolution and the President that was ousted was exiled to Jamaica with his entourage. My father was among them and that was how I happened to go.”

“Yo’-all got me ways off what I was a gwineta say at the beginning,” said Malty, “and that was that the Frenchies am A number one in the kitchen, but they ain’t gotem on the bread.”

“I like French bread,” said Goosey. “My teeth are good.”

“And my own is good, too, yaller,” said Malty, “but French bread is no good foh sandwich.”

“I don’t like French bread, anyhow,” said Bugsy. “It’s like a rotten pimp up in the Ditch⁠—all crust and no guts to it.”

Bugsy’s witticism brought a roar of laughter and spurred Banjo to a pronunciamento on the touts of the Ditch.

“What do them poah ofay trash in the Ditch know about doing the stuff in the big-style way it’s done back home?” declared Banjo. “Why, them nothing up there can’t even bring you a change a suit outa what them gals is giving them! Why, they can’t eat a decent meal! But a man who is subsequential to a three-franc throw, says I, ain’t got no business to wear a pants. I nevah seen such a lotta mangy p.i. in all mah life. A fellah doing that back home gotta show himself a man ehvery-time. Him gotta come strutting swell and blowing big. He’s gotta show he ain’t nobody’s ah-ah business. I knowed a fellah named Jerco in Harlem. Hi‑eee! but he was one strutting fool. I remember one night I was with some white guys in a buffet flat in Harlem. But they was cheap skates and only buying beer for the house. The madam sent out to find Jerco, and when that nigger blowed in theah them cheap ofays jest woke right up. The piano-player was half asleep. Jerco brushed him one side and made that piano cry a weeping ‘blues.’ He ordered whisky and he ordered wine. It wasn’t no time before he had the whole house going and the ofays coming across the right way. There was a li’l’ dog sleeping under a table. Jerco woke him up and told the madam to feed him. And when the dog finished eating he started to dance. And that was how the ‘dog-walk’ started.”

This time the boys’ laughter shook the place so hard that it knocked over a bottle which carried a glass to the floor, both of them breaking. The patronne called “Attention!” and came from behind the counter to pick the pieces up. Banjo offered to pay, but she refused to let him. She was laughing herself, although she did not understand.

Bugsy’s Chinese pie was splendid stuff after the sandwiches. And when the boys finished it, they left the café, going through the docks toward Joliette. It was too late for them to sleep on the breakwater after their feed. So they straggled along, remarking the ships in the docks. There was a new Italian ship, a fine thing, moored where they were building the American-style concrete warehouse.

The boys stopped to admire her and the building. A little farther on they came upon a small pinch-faced white boy with a hunk of bread so hard that he was softening it under a hydrant to be able to eat it.

“Look at that poah kid!” said Banjo. “Starving, and we just done ate moh’n we could finish! Oh, Gawd! what a life! Some stuffing till they’re messing up themsel’s all ovah, and some drinking cold water to kill pain in the guts.⁠ ⁠… Heah! Come heah, kid!”

“Wachu gwina do? Don’t give the white bastard a damn thing!” Bugsy cried.

“Shet you’ trap, ugly mug,” said Banjo.

The boy saw Banjo beckon, and went to him. He did not understand English. Banjo gave him five francs, and the boy said “Merci” and started toward a little buffet shed near by.

“Youse a bloody sucker, you,” said Bugsy. “A white person can always make a handout, where you kain’t.”

“I don’t give a low-down drilling about that,” replied Banjo. “The kid was hungry and I done give him a raise. I know more’n you do, perhaps, Bugsy, that being black ain’t the same as being white, but⁠—Ain’t I right, pardner?”

Banjo not finding words to express exactly what he felt, broke off and appealed to Ray.

“Sure you are. I was going to give the kid something mahself, but you were before me.”

“Last week,” said Banjo, “when Malty tried to bum a Englishman on that P. & O. boat, the bloody white hog said that he didn’t wanta talk to no black fellows. Today I kid a cracker gal outa five dollars for the bunch. It’s a funny life and you got to take it funny.”

“Youse a regular sore-back nigger,” remarked Bugsy. “I done said it some moh times and I’ll say it again, you nevah know when an American black man gwine show himself a white man’s nigger.”

“I’ll slap the sass outa you, you mean little coconut-dodger,” cried Banjo, “ef you call me any white man’s nigger,” and he gave Bugsy a poke in his jaw that sent him sprawling.

Bugsy got up frothy at the corners of his mouth, which was always a biological peculiarity with him, but now in his wrath it was more pronounced. He opened a large pocket knife and cried, “I’ll cut you all ways and don’t miss you throat.”

“Try it, nigger,” said Banjo, quietly enough. “Because you lick that theah South African Jew boy, you think youse got a chance against me?”

But the other boys put themselves between them and disarmed Bugsy. In the scuffle Ray’s wrist was cut and bled a great deal.

To Ray the incident recalled another, almost identical affair that happened in London. It was some time after the report of the Amritsar massacre had demonstrated that the mind of the world, shock-proof from the deeds of the great war, nevertheless could still be moved by tragic events. One evening Ray was strolling through a square with two Indians when a one-armed man stepped out of the shadow and begged alms. Evidently he was ashamed, for his hat was pulled down to hide his face. One of the Indians gave a harsh refusal, adding, as they walked on: “It is his kind the British use to make our people crawl before them in India.”

Ray felt ashamed. Ashamed that the man should be forced to beg. Ashamed of the refusal. Ashamed of himself. Ashamed of humanity. Instinctively he felt that the man who begged was not of the hateful type that does the sentry duty of the British Empire. Yet he could not feel that his Indian friend was wrong. He never gave alms in public himself, even when he could afford it. It made him feel cheap and embarrassed. But he would have liked to give something to that one-armed man. And he had not dared.

He hated the society that forced him into such an equivocal position. He hated civilization. Once in a moment of bitterness he had said in Harlem, “Civilization is rotten.” And the more he traveled and knew of it, the more he felt the truth of that bitter outburst.

He hated civilization because its general attitude toward the colored man was such as to rob him of his warm human instincts and make him inhuman. Under it the thinking colored man could not function normally like his white brother, responsive and reacting spontaneously to the emotions of pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow, kindness or hardness, charity, anger, and forgiveness. Only within the confines of his own world of color could he be his true self. But so soon as he entered the great white world, where of necessity he must work and roam and breathe the larger air to live, that entire world, high, low, middle, unclassed, all conspired to make him painfully conscious of color and race.

Should I do this or not? Be mean or kind? Accept, give, withhold? In determining his action he must be mindful of his complexion. Always he was caught by the sharp afterthought of color, as if some devil’s hand jerked a cord to which he was tethered in hell. Regulate his emotions by a double standard. Oh, it was hell to be a man of color, intellectual and naturally human in the white world. Except for a superman, almost impossible.

It was easy enough for Banjo, who in all matters acted instinctively. But it was not easy for a Negro with an intellect standing watch over his native instincts to take his own way in this white man’s civilization. But of one thing he was resolved: civilization would not take the love of color, joy, beauty, vitality, and nobility out of his life and make him like one of the poor mass of its pale creatures. Before he was aware of what was the big drift of this Occidental life he had fought against it instinctively, and now that he had grown and broadened and knew it better, he could bring intellect to the aid of instinct.

Could he not see what Anglo-Saxon standards were doing to some of the world’s most interesting peoples? Some Jews ashamed of being Jews. Changing their names and their religion⁠ ⁠… for the Jesus of the Christians. The Irish objecting to the artistic use of their own rich idioms. Inferiority bile of non-Nordic minorities. Educated Negroes ashamed of their race’s intuitive love of color, wrapping themselves up in respectable gray, ashamed of Congo-sounding laughter, ashamed of their complexion (bleaching out), ashamed of their strong appetites. No being ashamed for Ray. Rather than lose his soul, let intellect go to hell and live instinct!