Balch.
"You forget," replied Mr. Walters, "that Mrs. Garie was a coloured woman."
"If it wasn't such a solemn subject I really should be obliged to laugh at
you, Walters," rejoined Mr. Balch, with a smile--"you talk ridiculously.
What can her complexion have to do with her being buried there, I should
like to know?"
"It has everything to do with it! Can it be possible you are not aware that
they won't even permit a coloured person to walk through the ground, much
less to be buried there!"
"You astonish me, Walters! Are you sure of it?"
"I give you my word of honour it is so! But why should you be astonished at
such treatment of the dead, when you see how they conduct themselves
towards the living? I have a friend," continued Mr. Walters, "who
purchased a pew for himself and family in a white-church, and the deacons
actually removed the floor from under it, to prevent his sitting there.
They refuse us permission to kneel by the side of the white communicants at
the Lord's Supper, and give us separate pews in obscure corners of their
churches. All this you know--why, then, be surprised that they carry their
prejudices into their graveyards?--the conduct is all of a piece."
"Well, Walters, I know the way things are conducted in our churches is
exceedingly reprehensible; but I really did not know they stretched their
prejudices to such an extent.
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