her examination as a candidate, and was received as a church member.  When she was about to make her first communion, she unintentionally took her seat at the head of the column.  The elder who was administering the communion gave her the bread in the order in which she sat, but before he gave her the wine some one touched him on the shoulder and whispered a word in his ear.  He then passed mamma by, gave the cup to others, and then returned to her.  From that rite connected with the holiest memories of earth, my poor mother returned humiliated and depressed.”

“What a shame!” exclaimed Dr. Gresham, indignantly.

“I have seen,” continued Iola, “the same spirit manifested in the North.  Mamma once attempted to do missionary work in this city.  One day she found an outcast colored girl, whom she wished to rescue.  She took her to an asylum for fallen women and made an application for her, but was refused.  Colored girls were not received there.  Soon after mamma found among the colored people an outcast white girl.  Mamma’s sympathies, unfettered by class distinction, were aroused in her behalf, and, in company with two white ladies, she went with the girl to that same refuge.  For her the door was freely opened and admittance readily granted.  It was as if two women were sinking in the quicksands, and on the solid land stood other women with life-lines in their hands, seeing the deadly sands slowly creeping up around the hapless victims.  To one they readily threw the lines of deliverance, but for the other there was not one strand of salvation.  Sometime since, to the same asylum, came a poor fallen girl who had escaped from the clutches of a wicked woman.  For her the door would have been opened, had not the vile woman from whom she was escaping followed her to that place of refuge and revealed the fact that she belonged to the colored race.  That fact was enough to close the door upon her, and to send her back to sin and to suffer, and perhaps to die as a wretched outcast.  And yet in this city where a number of charities are advertised, I do not think there is one of them which, in appealing to the public, talks more religion than the managers of this asylum.  This prejudice against the colored race environs our lives and mocks our aspirations.”

“Iola, I see no use in your persisting that you are colored when your eyes are as blue and complexion as white as mine.”

“Doctor, were I your wife, are there not people who would caress me as a white woman who would shrink from me in scorn if they knew I had one drop of negro blood in my veins?  When mistaken for a white woman, I should hear things alleged against the race at which my blood would boil.  No, Doctor, I am not willing to live under a shadow of concealment which I thoroughly hate as if the blood in my veins were an undetected crime of my soul.”

“Iola, dear, surely you paint the picture too darkly.”