A Frenchman in America Part 36

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

ANN ARBOR--THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN--DETROIT AGAIN--THE FRENCH OUT OF FRANCE--OBERLIN COLLEGE, OHIO--BLACK AND WHITE--ARE ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS EQUAL?

_Detroit, March 22._

ONE of the most interesting and brilliant audiences that I have yet addressed was the large one which gathered in the lecture hall of the University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, last night. Two thousand young, bright faces to gaze at from the platform is a sight not to be easily forgotten. I succeeded in pleasing them, and they simply delighted me.

The University of Michigan is, I think, the largest in the United States.

Picture to yourself one thousand young men and one thousand young women, in their early twenties, staying together in the same boarding-houses, studying literature, science, and the fine arts in the same cla.s.s-rooms, living happily and in perfect harmony.

They are not married.

No restraint of any sort. Even in the boarding-houses they are allowed to meet in the sitting-rooms; I believe that the only restriction is that, at eight o'clock in the evening, or at nine (I forget which), the young ladies have to retire to their private apartments.

"But," some European will exclaim, "do the young ladies' parents trust all these young men?" They do much better than that, my dear friend--they trust their daughters.

During eighteen years, I was told, three accidents happened, but three marriages happily resulted.

The educational system of America engenders the high morality which undoubtedly exists throughout the whole of the United States, by accustoming women to the companionship of men from their infancy, first in the public schools, then in the high schools, and finally in the universities. It explains the social life of the country. It accounts for the delightful manner in which men treat women. It explains the influence of women. Receiving exactly the same education as the men, the women are enabled to enjoy all the intellectual pleasures of life. They are not inferior beings intended for mere housekeepers, but women destined to play an important part in all the stations of life.

No praise can be too high for a system of education that places knowledge of the highest order at the disposal of every child born in America. The public schools are free, the high schools are free, and the universities,[4] through the aid that they receive from the United States and from the State in which they are, can offer their privileges, without charge for tuition, to all persons of either s.e.x who are qualified by knowledge for admission.

The University of Michigan comprises the Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts, the Department of Medicine and Surgery, the Department of Law, the School of Pharmacy, the h.o.m.oeopathic Medical College, and the College of Dental Surgery. Each department has its special Faculty of Instruction.

I count 118 professors on the staff of the different faculties.

The library contains 70,041 volumes, 14,626 unbound brochures, and 514 maps and charts.

The University also possesses beautiful laboratories, museums, an astronomical observatory, collections, workshops of all sorts, a lecture hall capable of accommodating over two thousand people, art studios, etc., etc. Almost every school has a building of its own, so that the University is like a little busy town.

No visit that I have ever paid to a public inst.i.tution interested me so much as the short one paid to the University of Michigan yesterday.

Dined this evening with Mr. W. H. Brearley, editor of the Detroit _Journal_. Mr. Brearley thinks that the Americans, who received from France such a beautiful present as the statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World," ought to present the mother country of General Lafayette with a token of her grat.i.tude and affection, and he has started a national subscription to carry out his idea. He has already received support, moral and substantial. I can a.s.sure him that nothing would touch the hearts of the French people more than such a tribute of grat.i.tude and friendship from the other great republic.

In the evening I had a crowded house in the large lecture hall of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation.

After the lecture, I met an interesting Frenchman residing in Detroit.

"I was told a month ago, when I paid my first visit to Detroit, that there were twenty-five thousand French people living here," I said to him.

"The number is exaggerated, I believe," he replied, "but certainly we are about twenty thousand."

"I suppose you have French societies, a French Club?" I ventured.

He smiled.

"The Germans have," he said, "but we have not. We have tried many times to found French clubs in this city, so as to establish friendly intercourse among our compatriots, but we have always failed."

"How is that?" I asked.

"Well, I don't know. They all wanted to be presidents, or vice-presidents. They quarreled among themselves."

"When six Frenchmen meet to start a society," I said, "one will be president, two vice-presidents, one secretary, and the other a.s.sistant-secretary. If the sixth cannot obtain an official position, he will resign and go about abusing the other five."

"That's just what happened."

It was my turn to smile. Why should the French in Detroit be different from the French all over the world, except perhaps in their own country?

A Frenchman out of France is like a fish out of water. He loses his native amiability and becomes a sort of suspicious person, who spends his life in thinking that everybody wants to tread on his corns.

"When two Frenchmen meet in a foreign land," goes an old saying, "there is one too many."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TWO FRENCHMEN.]

In Chicago there are two Frenchmen engaged in teaching the natives of the city "how to speak and write the French language correctly." The people of Chicago maintain that the streets are too narrow to let these two Frenchmen pa.s.s, when they walk in opposite directions. And it appears that one of them has lately started a little French paper--to abuse the other in.

I think that all the faults and weaknesses of the French can be accounted for by the presence of a defect, jealousy; and the absence of a quality, humor.

_Oberlin, O., March 24._

Have to-night given a lecture to the students of Oberlin College, a religious inst.i.tution founded by the late Rev. Charles Finney, the friend of the slaves, and whose voice, they say, when he preached, shook the earth.

The college is open to colored students; but in an audience of about a thousand young men and women, I could only discover the presence of two descendants of Ham.

Originally many colored students attended at Oberlin College, but the number steadily decreased every year, and to-day there are only very few. The colored student is not officially "boycotted," but he has probably discovered by this time that he is not wanted in Oberlin College any more than in the orchestra stalls of an American theater.

The Declaration of Independence proclaims that "all men are created equal," but I never met a man in America (much less still a woman) who believed this or who acted upon it.

The railroad companies have special cars for colored people, and the saloons special bars. At Detroit, I was told yesterday that a respectable and wealthy mulatto resident, who had been refused service in one of the leading restaurants of the town, brought an action against the proprietor, but that, although there was no dispute of the facts, the jury unanimously decided against the plaintiff, who was moreover mulcted in costs to a heavy amount. But all this is nothing: the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, one of the most representative and influential corporations in the United States, refuses to admit colored youths to membership.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NEGRO.]

It is just possible that in a few years colored students will have ceased to study at Oberlin College.

I can perfectly well understand that Jonathan should not care to a.s.sociate too closely with the colored people, for, although they do not inspire me with repulsion, still I cannot imagine--well, I cannot understand for one thing how the mulatto can exist.