Let us see.

A few months ago I sat in the banking office of Mr. William E. Mathews and ex-Congressman Joseph H. Rainey (of South Carolina), in Washington.  As I sat there, a stream of patrons came and went.  The whites were largely in the majority.  They all wanted to negotiate a loan, or to meet a note just matured.  Among the men were contractors, merchants, department clerks, etc.  They all spoke with the utmost deference to the colored gentleman who had money to loan upon good security and good interest.

A few months ago I dined with ex-Senator B.K.  Bruce (of Mississippi), now Register of the United States Treasury.  The ex-Senator has a handsome house, and a delightful family.  In running my eyes over his card tray, I saw the names of some of the foremost men and women of the nation who had called upon Register and Mrs. Bruce.  In passing through the Register’s department with the Senator, sight-seeing, I was not surprised at the marks of respect shown to Mr. Bruce by the white ladies and gentlemen in his department.  Why?  Because Mr. Bruce is a gentleman by instinct, a diplomat by nature, and a scholar who has “burned the midnight oil.”  Such a person does not have to ask men and women to respect him; they do so instinctively.

I walked down F street and called at the office of Prof.  Richard T. Greener, a ripe scholar and a gentleman.  The professor not only has a paying law practice, but is president of a new insurance company.  He has all that he can do, and his patrons are both black and white.

All this and more came under my observation in the course of an hour’s leisure at the capital of the nation.  And the black man has not yet aroused himself to a full sense of his responsibilities or of his opportunities.

In Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston we have colored men of large wealth, who conduct extensive business operations and enjoy the confidence and esteem of their fellow citizens without regard to caste.

Speaking upon the progress of the colored race, in the course of an address on the “Civil Rights Law,” at Washington, October 20, 1883, the Hon. John Mercer Langston, United States Minister and Consul General to Hayti, and one of the most remarkable, scholarly, and diplomatic men the colored race in America has produced, drew the following pen-picture: 

Do you desire to witness moral wonders?  Start at Chicago; travel to St. Louis; travel to Louisville; travel to Nashville; travel to Chattanooga; travel on to New Orleans, and in every State and city you will meet vast audiences, immense concourses of men and women with their children, boys and girls, who, degraded and in ignorance because of their slavery formerly, are to-day far advanced in general social improvement.

It would be remarkable now for you to go into the home of one of our families, and find even our daughters incompetent to discourse