The wife of his youth
... Liza telling her that he would come back for her after he had turned 21 years old or else find a way to save up the money to buy her freedom so that the two of them could live together in happiness. Sam moved up north and had found work in an office working for a railroad company. This is where the man known as Sam Taylor transforms into the man better know today as Mr. Ryder, the dean of the “Blue Veins”. Mr. Ryder of the “Blue Veins Society” is a man held to a high statue. He is well respected amongst his peers and widely known as a man of honor, dignity, and strong morals. Mr. Ryder could, in a sense be seen as the “poster child” for the African American race, which at that time was fresh out of the civil war and struggling to find their niche in a culture which, at the time, was predominantly ruled by the upper class, rich, white Americans. “I have no race prejudice,” he would say, “but we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and the nether millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black. The one doesn’t want us yet, but may take us in time. The other would welcome us, but it would be for us a backward step. ‘With malice towards none, with charity for all,’ we must do the best we can for ourselves and those who are to follow us. Self-preservation is the first law of nature” (Chesnutt 791). All this being said and even with the notion that Mr. Ryder is a fair and just man, whose moral issues would weigh out any question of race, especially with regards to one of his own (Liza Jane) that a man, with the position that he is in would only take upon a suitor that would best blend with his own ideals and principals. It would only seem right to the naked eye or to someone with no prior conception that Mr. Ryder is not exactly who he says he is, to see him end up marrying a woman of the same social structure from which he is accustomed to. Even though he proclaims social equality, it would not seem right for a man of his league to enter into a relationship with a woman with the caliber of that of Ms. Jane, or at least would not settle well with the friends and other companions in his “Blue Vein Society” which he has called to his house on this night for a ball and the proposing of marriage to his, what is thought to be his future wife. So the question is now, why would Mr. Ryder even consider leaving the life for which he has struggled and worked so hard at in order to rejoin his old wife who is still living as an indentured servant cook? Even though Mr. Ryder may be living in the lap of luxury at this point, there still seems to be a void in which he has not been able to fill. From his earlier days working in the railroad office as a clerk Ryder has been on a mission to improve his social status and to better educate himself with not only the world around him but with the works of well-renowned authors and poets. He has become extremely knowledgeable in the field of poetry and is said to be able to recite entire pages of poetry on the drop of a dime. It has been through his learning and discovery of all these new wonders that he has learned to suppress any remaining feelings that he once had for his old wife Liza. Instead of searching for her, he turned to books for safety and solitude. It gave him a false impression of relief, a relief that he had never felt from any other woman that he had met and he had met quite a few of them in his time! However, these women never satisfied his taste or his desire for living. Instead he turned to poetry, which became his new passion in life. Finally, later in his life Ryder decides to settle down with a woman h...