couldn't beat anything into their heads, not if you took a sledge
hammer. Poor fellow, he is gone now and I ought not to say anything agin
him, but if he had minded me, I would have had a home over my head and
some land under my feet; but it is no use to grieve over spilled milk.
When he was living if I said, yes, he was always sure to say, no. One
day I said to him when he was opposing me, the way we live is like the
old saying, 'Pull Dick and pull devil,' and what do you think he said?"

"I don't know, I'm sure, what was it?"

"Why, he just looked at me and smiled and said, 'I am Dick.' Of course
he meant that I was the other fellow."

"But," said Mrs. Lasette, "this is a digression from our subject. What
I meant to say is this, that in our Ward is an excellent school house
with a half score of well equipped and efficient teachers. The former
colored school house was a dingy looking building about a mile and a
half away with only one young school teacher, who had, it is true,
passed a creditable examination. Now, when my daughter saw that the
children of all other nationalities, it mattered not how low and
debasing might be their environments, could enter the school for which
her father paid taxes, and that she was forced either to stay at home or
to go through all weathers to an ungraded school, in a poorly ventilated
and unevenly heated room, would not such public inequality burn into her
soul the idea of race-inferiority? And this is why I look upon the mixed
school as a right step in the right direction."

"Taking this view of the matter I see the pertinence of your position on
this subject. Do you know," continued Mr. Lomax,[7] his face lighting up
with a fine enthusiasm, "that I am full of hope for the future of our
people?"

"That's more than I am," said Mrs. Larkins very coldly. "When you have
summered and wintered them as I have, you will change your tune."

"Oh, I hope not," he replied with an accent of distress in his voice.
"You may think me a dreamer and enthusiast, but with all our faults I
firmly believe that the Negro belongs to one of the best branches of the
human race, and that he has a high and holy mission in the great drama
of life. I do not think our God is a purposeless Being, but his ways are
not as our ways are, and his thoughts are not our thoughts, and I dare
not say 'Had I his wisdom or he my love,' the condition of humanity
would be better. I prefer thinking that in the crucible of p