Let us then judge fairly, and award to the colored race what belongs to them by right. As in the days of slavery, so at the present day it is the colored man who still extracts the wealth from the soil of the South, partly for himself, and partly for the white man. He can stand the heat of the sun far better than the white tiller of the soil, and it seems that the rich white man would rather have him than the other. In the days of slavery we had to do the best we could. We had no Vanderbilt palaces to live in then. But now we have at least lots of comforts—nice furniture, carpets, pictures hanging from our walls, whole libraries on our book-shelves, and hundreds of other things too numerous to mention. [Illustration: _GRANT’S TOMB._] Music and song are more or less bound up with the history of every nation of which we have ever heard or read. Away back in the dark night of slavery in America, the slaves in the field used to sing their mournful, plaintive, yet musical ditties to lighten their heavy labors, and cheer up their hearts. These ditties were songs and prayers at one and the same time. In the day of his distress, the African never forgot the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, and we know quite well that many of our own people confidently expected that day of happy deliverance that came at last to all. Therefore they sang praises unto the Lord, God of Israel, and, like the Psalmist, they prayed and sang at the same time; and we have it plainly on record that they had powerful lungs and most wonderfully rich voices, showing in advance what great and famous singers they would become if their musical talents were only fully developed like others. I have already spoken of the "Jubilee Minstrels," who were mostly born in slavery, many of whom indeed "came up by the rough side of the mountain," and yet who possessed such a wealth of music and song within themselves that they surprised the whole country, and even crossed the North Atlantic, and rendered themselves illustrious for all coming time by performing and singing before Queen Victoria, the grandees and general population of the British Isles, and some of the royal families, and magnates and peoples of continental Europe. This was honor, indeed, with a vengeance! Old England and all the rest cared nothing for the color of the skin. They all at once set their seals upon the wonderful talents of the colored race in the musical line, and there was rejoicing among Freedom’s friends over all the earth.