to glorify him at the expense of my mother's race. She was faithful to
me when he deserted me to a life of ignorance and poverty, and although
three-fourths of the blood in my veins belongs to my father's face, I
feel a kinship with my mother's people that I do not with his, and I
will defend that race from the aspersions of the meanest Negro hater in
the land. Heathenism and civilization live side by side on American
soil, but all the heathenism is not on the side of the Negro. Look at
slavery and kukluxism with their meanness and crimes, mormonism with its
vile abominations, lynch law with its burnings and hangings, our
national policy in regard to the Indians and Chinese."

"I do not think," said the minister, "that there is another civilized
country in the world where men are lynched for real or supposed crimes
outside of America."

"The Negro need not bow his head like a bulrush in the presence of a
race whose records are as stained by crime and dishonor as theirs. Let
others decry the Negro, and say hard things about him, I am not prepared
to join in the chorus of depreciation."

After parting with the minister, Mr. Thomas resolved, if pluck and
energy were of any avail, that he would leave no stone unturned in
seeking employment. He searched the papers carefully for advertisements,
walked from one workshop to the other looking for work, and was
eventually met with a refusal which meant, no negro need apply. At last
one day when he had tried almost every workshop in the place, he entered
the establishment of Wm. C. Nell, an Englishman who had not been long
enough in America to be fully saturated by its Christless and inhuman
prejudices. He was willing to give Mr. Thomas work, and put tools in his
hands, and while watching how deftly he handled them, he did not notice