it; said he knew his own business best, and shut me up by telling me that he was not going to let any woman rule over him; and here I am to-day, Larkins gone and his poor old widow scuffing night and day to keep soul and body together; but there are some men you 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 pain and apparent disaster, that we are held by the hand of a loving Father who is doing for us all, the best he can to fit us for companionship with him in the eternities, and with John G. Whittier, I feel: