The happy
results were seen at subsequent meetings of the union, for after that
other girls from other than the Irish group came in fast, peasant
girls, wearing their shawls, and colored girls, till, when the union
was six months old, it had five hundred members. The initiation of
the first colored girl was a touching occasion. Hannah O'Day had been
present at one of the men's meetings, on an evening when it had been
a colored man who at the ceremony of initiation had presented white
candidates for membership, and the sense of universal brotherhood had
then come over her as a sort of revelation. And there were others who
felt with her. One night, Hannah being doorkeeper at her own union
meeting, a colored girl applied to be admitted. Hannah called out:
"A colored sister is at the door; what'll I do with her." It was the
young president herself, Mollie Daley, though she had been brought up
to think of colored folks as "trash," who, with a disregard of strict
parliamentary law, but with a beautiful cordiality, broke in with: "I
say, admit her at once, and let yez give her a hearty welcome.
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