Explore "Upstairs Downstairs" by Hervey Allen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The judge, who lives impeccably upstairs / With dull decorum and its implication, / Has all his servants in to family prayers, / And edifies _his_ soul with exhortation.
Meanwhile his blacks live wastefully downstairs; / Not always chaste, they manage to exist / With less decorum than the judge upstairs, / And find withal a something that he missed.
This painful fact a Swede philosopher, / Who tarried for a fortnight in our city, / Remarked, one evening at the meal, before / We paralyzed him silent with our pity --
Saying the black man living with the white / Had given more than white men could requite.