ourneymen. When he was down they
were ready to kick him down. When he was up they were ready to receive
his helping hand. Mr. Thomas soon reached that "tide in his affairs
which taken at the flood leads on to fortune." Against the odds which
were against him his pluck and perseverance prevailed, and he was
enabled not only to build up a good business for himself, but also to
help others, and to teach them by his own experience not to be too
easily discouraged, but to trust to pluck more than luck, and learn in
whatever capacity they were employed to do their work heartily as unto
the Lord and not unto men.

Anxious to do what she could to benefit the community in which she
lived, Mrs. Lasette threw open her parlors for the gathering together
of the best thinkers and workers of the race, who choose to avail
themselves of the privilege of meeting to discuss any question of vital
importance to the welfare of the colored people of the nation. Knowing
the entail of ignorance which slavery had left them, she could not be
content by shutting up herself to mere social enjoyments within the
shadow of her home. And often the words would seem to ring within her
soul, "my people is destroyed for lack of knowledge," and with those
words would come the question, am I doing what I can to dispel the
darkness which has hung for centuries around our path? I have been
blessed with privileges which were denied others; I sat 'mid the light
of knowledge when some of my ill-fated sisters did not know what it was
to see daylight in their cabins from one week's end to the other.
Sometimes when she met with coldness and indifference where she least
expected it, she would grow sad but would not yield to discouragement.
Her heart was in the right place. "Freely she had received and freely
she would give." It was at one of Mrs. Lasette's gatherings that Mr.
Thomas met Rev. Mr. Lomax on whose church he had been refused a place,
and Mr. Thurman, a tradesman who also had been ousted from his position
through pride of caste and who had gone into another avocation, and
also Charley Cooper, of whom we have lost sight for a number of years.
He is now a steady and prosperous young man, a constant visitor at
Mrs. Lasette's. Rumor says that Mrs. Lasette's bright-eyed and lovely
daughter is the magnet which attracts him to their pleasant home. Rev.
Lomax has also been absent for several years on other charges, but when
he meets Mr. Thomas, the past flows back