“Because my men would all rise up against it.  Now, for my part, I have no prejudice against your parishioner, but my men will not work with a colored man.  I would let them all go if I could get enough colored men to suit me just as well, but such is the condition of the labor market, that a man must either submit to a number of unpalatable things or run the risk of a strike and being boycotted.  I think some of these men who want so much liberty for themselves have very little idea of it for other people.”

After this conversation the minister told Mr. Thomas the result of his interview with the master builder, and said,

“I am very sorry; but it is as it is, and it can’t be any better.”

“Do you mean by that that things are always going to remain as they are?”

“I do not see any quick way out of it.  This prejudice is the outgrowth of ages; it did not come in a day, nor do I expect that it will vanish in an hour.”

“Nor do I; but I do not think the best way for a people to mend their pastures is to sit down and bewail their fate.”

“No; we must be up and going for ourselves.  White people will——­”

“White people,” exclaimed Mr. Thomas somewhat impatiently.  “Is there not a great deal of bosh in the estimate some of us have formed of white people.  We share a common human feeling, from which the same cause produces the same effect.  Why am I today a social Pariah, begging for work, and refused situation after situation?  My father is a wealthy Southerner; he has several other sons who are inheritors of his name and heirs of his wealth.  They are educated, cultured and occupy high social positions.  Had I not as good a right to be well born as any of them?  And yet, through my father’s crime, I was doomed to the status of a slave with its heritage of ignorance, poverty and social debasement.  Talk of the heathenism of Africa, of hostile tribes warring upon each other and selling the conquered foes into the hands of white men, but how much higher in the scale of moral progression was the white man who doomed his own child, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, to a life of slavery?  The heathen could plead in his defence the fortunes of war, and the hostility of an opposing tribe, but the white man who enslaved his child warred upon his hapless offspring and wrote chattel upon his condition when his hand was too feeble to hurl aside the accursed hand and recognize no other ownership but God.  I once felt bitterly on this subject, and although it is impossible for my father to make full reparation for the personal wrong inflicted on me, I owe him no grudge.  Hating is poor employment for any rational being, but I am not prepared to glorify him at the expense of my mother’s race.  She was faithful to me when he deserted me to a life of ignorance and poverty, and although three-fourths of the blood in my veins belongs to my father’s face, I feel a kinship with my mother’s