"This Man Is Losing His Mind"

"Hello, stranger," said Miss Palmer one beautiful morning, when he came strolling by. "I haven't seen you for a long time," she said, smiling not overly pleasant. In fact, Miss Palmer looked worn, and acted likewise. She did not present a hopeful example, as Wyeth saw her now. She was sweeping the sidewalk in front of her place with a broom that was worn to the last threads, and more. These had been cut, and only the small wire held it to the handle.

"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, upon looking at it. "What do you call that?" and pointed at it with a laugh. She looked sad and replied:

"That's my broom. Isn't it a shame? But it's all the broom I have. Won't you buy me one, and give it to me as a present? You make plenty of money, and I have five fifty in the house for you myself." She smiled up into his face now wearily, and he was touched. He was, moreover, sorry now for what he had said. But to make amends, he replied cheerfully:

"Sure, sis. Take any part of what is due me, and use it for that purpose."

"That is so sweet of you," she smiled, gratefully. "I always believed you were sweet, regardless of the fact that of late you have become so awful."

"How's that?" he inquired, curiously.

"Oh, I have been constrained to believe you are losing your mind. You have succeeded in criticising about everybody and everything, that pertains to the good colored people of this city."

"Oh, Miss Palmer," he cried, looking hurt, "I have not criticised everybody and everything. I have only shown that I think a lot of the so-called good people are four-flushers and selfish creatures, with no real love for the race, nor any regard for the civic improvement of these black people. But I know lots of good, kind, sincere colored people in this town, that I am proud of as members of the race."

"Come into the house," she invited, and presently they were seated in the parlor. At once Miss Palmer took up the discussion of society, and the buying of homes, which had reached a degree of impracticability among the colored people, notwithstanding the sound idea.

All over the country, during this pilgrimage, Wyeth had witnessed this purchase idea with a mark of encouragement. And, to say that they were succeeding, was a fact that meant a great deal to their future welfare.

Miss Palmer delighted always to discuss the buying of a home, and marrying. Another teacher was visiting her that day, and likewise shared her views. Wyeth did too, but he always had questions to ask, that sometimes made the discussion rather upset.

Now he read the Negro paper, and had fearfully observed that an unusual and alarming amount of foreclosures was the order. In conversation with the numerous real estate dealers, he learned, moreover, that many of the attempts at purchasing, were foredoomed to failure when made; that to own a home, in a great many cases had become a fetish, and was, therefore, not based upon a practical consideration in the beginning.

A very successful dealer, colored, had told him confidentially, that he sold many homes, and would have bet, if it had been expedient, that they would not be able to keep the payments up for a year.

"How does so much of this come about?" he had inquired.

"Notoriety. Too many people do not study, although they may have a liberal school training among our people. It's the great ambition of too many, to get into a home with the first object of being seen therein, to show to their friends and put on airs. They buy with no idea whatever as to value, liability or anything. They have simply stinted themselves until they have managed to save a few dollars, and desire to get into the biggest home possible, to be where they can be seen by their friends."

"The rate of interest appears to be very high, I have observed," said he, by way of comment. The other looked at him meaningly, and then said:

"Interest eats these people alive here; just sucks their life's blood—but it is not that alone. Not one in five knows how to arrange a loan. They permit themselves to be governed by some dealer, who, in almost every instant, is the worst grafter possible. They will make a loan with a life of three years, at eight per cent interest, and five per cent commission. Now you know that no loan running three years, on property that poor people are trying to buy on the installment plan, is practical. Yet that is the kind of loan that most of these cheap sharks offer to the masses of our people, who have no judgment. A Negro is unable, as a rule, to realize that three years is a very short time. He is compelled to learn by bitter experience. The worst feature of this is, that at the end of it, he is so discouraged, that often he does not benefit by this experience, because the failure has gotten his heart, and he is done for.

"At the end of three years, which seems like three days when they are trying to buy a home, the shark is around for a renewal of the mortgage, and must, therefore, collect another cash commission of five per cent. Think of it! In two-thirds of such instances, it takes every dime they have paid in those three years. Sometimes more. Now how can people pay for a home under such conditions! But there is another side of it. And it all comes from the inability of our people to see further than their noses.

"Almost all these purchases are made beyond the extension of the sewerage, often the water works, positively no street improvements, and side walks are rare; but, in three years, in order to boom the property, the promoter is active in bringing some of these improvements within reach of this property. That adds about one-half to two-thirds more to the cost of the property he is trying to buy. Moreover, when these people know anything, they will not buy a house built by these promoters, for it is nothing but the cheapest shell they can get to stand, but attractive from the outside. In two years, the occupant is fortunate if he doesn't have to build another.

"Then comes the great day. These people cannot pay that commission over again, and the loan company doesn't care to increase the loan, maybe, by including the commission in a new one. If they are unable to make arrangements with a bank, and that means they are going to deed them the property, seven cases in ten, foreclosure proceedings are instituted. The property is finally deeded by the sheriff to the mortgagee. Now here is another phase: This piece of property can then be sold quicker than before, for this reason: It is very easy to frame up a tale, to the effect that a party who was purchasing the place was a shiftless drunkard, or anything, and imagination can supply the rest; but, inasmuch as they had taken the property back, they are now offering it at a greatly reduced price and better terms. There are so many subtle ways of drawing people in, that it would take a volume to relate them all; but they come to the same in the end. Installment property at two thousand dollars can be bought for about twelve to not exceed fifteen hundred. Instead of commission and everything else, buying by the installment plan in this, and every overboomed southern town, costs from twice to three times what the property would actually cost, if the purchaser could pay half of the purchase price cash, for, in that way he could secure terms, and could pay interest rate on the remainder. In time he would get the same paid, and have his little home."

"And that, you feel, is the reason for all this foreclosure?" said Wyeth.

"That is the cause of it. Why, advertising property for foreclosure has become a feature of competition, between the three Negro papers in this town. They get more money out of that end, than they do from the advertisements through straight business, for the purpose of selling it originally."

"It would seem that the people would get on to such methods by and by," Wyeth commented.

"Some, of course, do, and avoid it; but you cannot imagine how many do not. It all comes about through a lack of general intelligence. Too many of our people do not read anything; are, therefore, without any vision or judgment of their own. They don't know. And, of course, are made the goats of those who do."

"So that explains why a portion of this town to the west, and which is occupied almost exclusively by our people, has such dreadful streets and no sidewalks whatever."

"That's it. They will, perhaps, have none for the next twenty-five years. Too much property is being bought, and so little is being paid for, that it is a continual change about."

"I find a great many of the people—intelligent people—who do not care to see this side of it," Wyeth remarked.

"Half of the school teachers, for instance, seem to wish not to see it. And they get stung! But they are so anxious to be seen, and to be referred to in a position beyond their means, no wonder."

So Sidney Wyeth had to take this man's point of view for more than one reason. Like Attalia—but worse, these people considered literature, as a whole, dead stock. More than sixty thousand in number, the demand among them for books and magazines, was insufficient to justify any one's running a place for such a purpose. It was not large enough to justify either of the Negro drug stores carrying periodicals in stock, even those that were carried by all white drug stores, excepting those in districts occupied and patronized by the colored people. And with all this, there was not the least claim for that kind of knowledge. More than a hundred churches never encouraged the people to read anything but the Bible: apparently, the obtaining of a library had not worried any but Sidney Wyeth; it has been seen how they worried over the securing of a park. Is it a wonder, with all this under his observation, that Sidney Wyeth, who came from a land where people read and thought, and had some perspective, eventually came to be regarded as a chronic critic? He had witnessed more murders than he had in all the days of his life.

Having digressed to such a length, we will return now to Miss Annie Palmer, who was possessed with the ambition to be established in a home of her own, and to be seen by those who knew her.

"Just think of it, suga'," she said to the other teacher. "You can get the nicest kind of a home in the west end for a moderate sum, and only fifty or a hundred dollars down on the best of them. The rest is paid just like you pay rent, and no more." It was this, Wyeth recalled, that got them. "It cost no more than to pay rent after the first payment."

"Um-um," from the other.

"And the sewers, and sidewalks, and streets and lights are all there," said Wyeth kindly.

"Oh, there you go for an argument," Miss Palmer retorted, angrily. Wyeth grinned.

"Well, these things have all been completed to include this property...."

Miss Palmer said nothing to him in reply.

"And you can get it after the first payment like paying rent," commented the other teacher.

"Um-m," let out Miss Palmer, sweetly.

"What sweet real estate dealer offers such bargains and easy things?" said Wyeth, humorously. The druggist, who knew everybody's business, had told him that Miss Palmer, at one time, was the object of every real estate shark in Effingham. And then some one lodged her in the suburbs, and since, she had been left alone. So he wondered whether it was because Miss Palmer, as a lady high in colored society, could not conveniently get such an amount together.

"This man is losing his mind," she said, to the other teacher. The other now regarded Wyeth dubiously. He grinned and then said:

"If you start buying, or biting on one of these easy homes in the west end that you refer to, you are going to lose your head."

"Oh, is that so," Miss Palmer essayed, with much spirit. "Do you suppose, that with me teaching in the schools of this city for thirteen years—" and she had begun at twenty-two, so she told him once—"I do not know something! And if you infer that I haven't a hundred dollars, then you haven't become acquainted with Annie Palmer! Don't you worry about her, for she always has a roll convenient. And you never see any collectors coming here, and leaving without what they came for." She was very dignified now, as she went to the door to answer a knock.

The room in which they sat opened into a small hallway, which was entered from the street by a glass door. It was at this open door, that a man stood, who, however, could not be seen from where Miss Palmer's company sat. He could be heard, though. And they, the company, couldn't help hearing. They were not eavesdropping. It was then that Wyeth learned Miss Palmer was vain. He could not help recalling, that if "no collectors went away without what they came for," it was because they expected nothing when they came. So, when Miss Palmer had completed her trite sentence and sallied forth to answer the knock, they could not help hearing her say very quickly, and with some embarrassment:

"Oh, you are too early. Come back tomorrow. I have my books to deliver this afternoon, and will be ready for you tomorrow, so—"

That was as far as she got. And her company could not be censured for overhearing the rest of it, that is, what the other made in reply. The chances are the other was not aware of their presence, a few feet away, but that is a matter for conjecture. Miss Palmer could be heard attempting to finish with him, without his words that came in a flow. She was nervous, but he would have his say, and so he said, cutting off her discourse:

"I'm tired of this stalling, all this stalling you have been handing us for months. This has got to come to an end."

"I'll bring it to the office, I—"

"You'll do nothing of the kind, and you know you won't!"

"I'll pay you tomorrow, sure, sure, sure!" Why didn't the man be a gentleman and go, go, go! Plainly Miss Palmer was dreadfully nervous, more, as she could be heard by those who were listening. She was plainly in agony. The collector was on the warpath, and went on relentlessly:

"If you haven't made some disposition of it by Monday a week, get that stuff ready for the wagon," and a moment later his steps died away in the distance.

For one moment, Wyeth saw the face of her friend, but he couldn't believe it! And still, when Miss Palmer returned and resumed her discussion with regard to buying homes, he would have sworn that the other had to smother very quickly a gleeful expression.