from their affections and sympathies because they had come to labor
for the poor and the despised. Examples of this lofty devotion to a
good cause there undoubtedly were in the days long ago; but the bulk
of the work was performed by persons, male and female, to whom
employment, an opportunity to make an honest living in an honest way,
was a godsend. That they possessed much bravery to undertake a work
which shut them out from the sympathy and social recognition of those
who may be called their equals, is not denied; but that they were the
pampered children of fortune, laboring simply for God and humanity,
which zealous persons have painted them to be in newspapers and
magazines, religious and other, is simply making a mountain out of a
mole-hill. They were neither millionaires nor paupers, but they were
educated men and women, like thousands throughout the North and West,
who went into the field to labor because it was rich unto the harvest
and the laborers were few. To say that salaries offered were not
accepted always with promptness would be to get on the wrong side of a
correct statement of fact. There are hundreds and thousands of
educated men and women in the North and West to-day "waiting for
something to turn up," and who would not hesitate a moment to embrace
an opportunity, honorable and lucrative, which should present itself.
There was little romance in the undertaking; there was far less in the
work to be performed. I simply desire to protest against the
correctness of the distorted pictures drawn ostensibly to magnify the
sacrifices, which were many, and to belittle the rewards, which were
great, in the performance of an ordinary piece of work, by a class of
persons now rapidly disappearing from the scenes that once knew them.
Their work is fast being transferred to the hands of colored men and
women--the pupil is taking the place of the master; the demand drawing
upon the colored--not the white--supply, because "birds of a feather
flock together," more especially when one class is composed of