"What a shame," said Louis; "these men who have always had their rights
of citizenship, seem to know so little of the claims of justice and
humanity, that they are ready to brow-beat and intimidate these people
for voting according to their best interests. And what saddens me most
is to see so many people of the North clasping hands with these rebels
and traitors, and to hear it repeated that these people are too ignorant
to vote."

"Ignorant as they are," said Minnie, "during the war they knew more than
their masters; for they knew how to be true to their country, when their
masters were false to it, and rallied around the flag, when they were
trampling it under foot, and riddling it with bullets."

"Ah!" said uncle Richard, "I knows them of old. Last week some of them
offered me $500 if I would desert my party; but I wasn't going to
forsake my people. I have been in purty tight places this year. One
night when I come home my little girl said to me, 'Daddy, dere ain't no
bread in de house.' Now, that jist got me, but I begun to pray, and the
next day I found a quarter of a dollar, and then some of my colored
friends said it wouldn't do to let uncle Jack starve, and they made me
up seventy-five cents. My wife sometimes gets out of heart, but she
don't see very far off."

"I wish," said Louis, after Mr. Jackson had left, "that some of our
Northern men would only see the heroism of that simple-minded man. Here
he stands facing an uncertain future, no longer young in years, stripped
by slavery, his wife not in full sympathy with him, and yet with what
courage he refused the bribe."