given to the white race.  Mr. Thomas has encouraged her efforts, and taught her to believe that not only is her own honor at stake as a student, but that as a representative of her branch of the human race, she is on the eve of winning, or losing, not only for herself, but for others.  This view of the matter increases her determination and rouses up all the latent energies of her nature, and she labors day and night to be a living argument of the capability in her race.  For other girls who will graduate in that school, there will be open doors, and unclosed avenues, while she knows that the color of her skin will bar against her the doors of workshops, factories and school rooms, and yet Mr. Thomas, knowing all the discouragements around her path, has done what he could to keep her interest in her studies from flagging.  He knows that she has fine abilities, but that they must be disciplined by trial and endeavor before her life can be rounded by success and triumph.  He has seen several of her early attempts at versification; pleased and even delighted with them, he has shown them to a few of his most intellectual friends.  Eager and earnest for the elevation of the colored people, he has been pained at the coldness with which they have been received.

“I do not call that poetry,” said one of the most intelligent women of A.P.

“Neither do I see anything remarkable about her,” said another.

“I did not,” said Mr. Thomas, “bring you the effusions of an acknowledged poet, but I think that the girl has fine ability, which needs encouragement and recognition.”

But his friends could not see it; they were very charry of their admiration, lest their judgment should be found at fault, and then it was so much easier to criticise than it was to heartily admire; and they knew it seemed safer to show their superior intelligence by dwelling on the defects, which would necessarily have an amount of crudeness in them than to look beneath the defects for the suggestions of beauty, strength and grace which Mr. Thomas saw in these unripe, but promising effusions.  It seemed perfectly absurd with the surroundings of Tennis Court to expect anything grand or beautiful [to] develop in its midst; but with Annette, poetry was a passion born in her soul, and it was as natural for her to speak in tropes and figures as it was for others to talk in plain, common prose.  Mr. Thomas called her “our inveterate poet,” and encouraged her, but the literary aspirants took scarcely any interest in the girl whom they left to struggle on as best she might.  In her own home she was doomed to meet with lack of encouragement and appreciation from her relatives and grandmother’s friends.  One day her aunt, Eliza Hanson, was spending the day with her mother, and Annette showed her some of her verses and said to her, “that is one of my best pieces.”

“Oh, you have a number of best pieces,” said her aunt, carelessly.  “Can you cook a beefsteak?”