“Part of our city (ought I confine myself to saying part of the city) has not the whole city been cursed by rum?  But I now refer to a special part.  I have seen church after church move out of that part of the city where the nuisance and curse were so rife, but I never, to my knowledge, heard of one of those churches offering to build a reading room and evening home for boys, or to send out paid and sustained by their efforts, a single woman to go into rum-cursed homes and teach their inmates a more excellent way.  I would have in that parish building the most earnest men and women to come together and consult and counsel with each other on the best means to open for ourselves, doors which are still closed against us.”

“I am sure,” said the minister, “I am willing to do what I can for the temporal and spiritual welfare of our people, and in this I have the example of the great Physician who did not consider it beneath him to attend to physical maladies as well as spiritual needs, and who did not consider the synagogue too holy, nor the Sabbath day too sacred to administer to the destitute and suffering.”

“I was very sorry when I found out, Brother Thomas, that I could not have you employed on my church, but I do not see what else I could have done except submit.”

“That was all you could have done in that stage of the work when I applied, and I do not wish to bestow the slightest censure on you or the trustees of your church, but I think, if when you were about to build had you advertised for competent master-builders in the South, that you could have gotten enough to have built the church without having employed Mr. Hoog the master-builder.  Had you been able to have gone to him and said, ’we are about to build a church and it is more convenient for us to have it done by our citizens than to send abroad for laborers.  We are in communication with a colored master builder in Kentucky, who is known as an efficient workman and who would be glad to get the job, and if your men refuse to work with a colored man our only alternative will be to send for colored carpenters and put the building in their hands.’  Do you think he would have refused a thirty thousand dollar job just because some of his men refused to work with colored men?  I think the greater portion of his workmen would have held their prejudices in abeyance rather than let a thirty thousand dollar job slip out of their hands.  Now here is another thing in which I think united effort could have effected something.  Now, here is my friend Mr. Thurman; he was a saddler versed in both branches of harness making.  For awhile he got steady work in a saddler’s shop, but the prejudice against him was so great that his employer was forced to dismiss him.  He took work home, but that did not heal the dissatisfaction, and at last he gave it up and went to well-digging.  Now, there were colored men in that place who could have, as I think, invested some money in buying material