We came back at six, and
have been waiting ever since."
"Yes, papa," piped the child, a little boy of six or seven, who sat
between them, "and I am very hungry."
Miller felt very much elated as he drove homeward through the twilight.
By his side sat the two persons whom he loved best in all the world. His
affairs were prosperous. Upon opening his office in the city, he had
been received by the members of his own profession with a cordiality
generally frank, and in no case much reserved. The colored population of
the city was large, but in the main poor, and the white physicians were
not unwilling to share this unprofitable practice with a colored doctor
worthy of confidence. In the intervals of the work upon his hospital, he
had built up a considerable practice among his own people; but except in
the case of some poor unfortunate whose pride had been lost in poverty
or sin, no white patient had ever called upon him for treatment. He knew
very well the measure of his powers,--a liberal education had given him
opportunity to compare himself with other men,--and was secretly
conscious that in point of skill and knowledge he did not suffer by
comparison with any other physician in the town. He liked to believe
that the race antagonism which hampered his progress and that of his
people was a mere temporary thing, the outcome of former conditions, and
bound to disappear in time, and that when a colored man should
demonstrate to the community in which he lived that he possessed
character and power, that community would find a way in which to enlist
his services for the public good.
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