as
lectures, theatres, concerts, and even have a particular seat assigned
in the churches, and sometimes feel you were an object of pity even to
your best friends. I know that Mrs. Heston felt so when she was telling
her story, for when Mrs. Hickman said, 'Well, Sarah, I really pity you,'
I saw her dark eyes flash, and she has really beautiful eyes, as she
said, 'it is not pity we want, it is justice.'"

"In the first place, mother, she is a widow, with five children. She had
six. One died in the army,--and she had some business in Washington
connected with him. She says she was born in Virginia, and had one
little girl there, but as she could not bear the idea of her child
growing up in ignorance, she left the South and went to Albany. Her
husband was a barber, and was doing a good business there. She was
living in a very good neighborhood, and sent her child to the nearest
district school.

"After her little girl had been there awhile, her teacher told her she
must go home and not come there any more, and sent her mother a note;
the child did not know what she had done; she had been attentive to her
lessons, and had not behaved amiss, and she was puzzled to know why she
was turned out of school.

"'Oh! I hated to tell Mrs. Heston,' said the teacher; 'but the child
insisted, and I knew that it must come sooner or later. And so, said
she, I told her it was because she was colored.'

"'Is that all.' Poor child, she didn't know, that, in that fact lay
whole volumes of insult, outrage, and violence. I made up my mind, she
continued, that I would leave the place, and when my husband came home,
I said, 'Heston, let us leave this place; let us go farther west. I hear
that we can have our child educated there, just the same as any other
child.' At first my husband demurred, for we were doing a good business;
but I said, let us go, if we have to live on potatoes and salt.

"True, it was some pecuniary loss; but I never regretted it, although I
have been pretty near the potatoes and salt. My husband died, but I kept
my children together, and stood over the wash-tub day after day to keep
them at school. My oldest daughter graduated at the High School, and was
quite a favorite with the teachers. One term there was a vacancy in her
room, caused by the resignation of one of the assistant teachers, and
the first teacher had the privilege of selecting her assistants from the
graduates of the High School, their appointment, of co