“Tools!  What do you mean by tools?”

Mr. Thomas told him how he learned to be a carpenter in the South and how he had tried so unsuccessfully in the North to get an opportunity to work at his trade until discouraged with the attempt, he had made up his mind to take whatever work came to hand till he could see farther.

The merchant immediately procured the materials and set Mr. Thomas to work, who in a short time finished the counter, and showed by his workmanship that he was an excellent carpenter.  The merchant pleased with his work and satisfied with his ability, entrusted him with the erection of a warehouse and, strange as it may appear, some of those men who were too proud or foolish to work with him as a fellow laborer, were humble enough to work under him as journeymen.  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