“Why, if Uncle Sam had been stole away from his home and his faithful Columbia, and had been worked to death, and whipped, and abused every way, wouldn’t he be glad to be took back to his own home agin, and wouldn’t he expect the ones that stole him to do it? “Yes, indeed. “Then why hain’t he willin’ to do as he would be done by? “But as I say, I have been spozin’ this, that Uncle Sam should turn honest and do this; but some think the colored people would do it themselves. “They have amassed millions of dollars sence the War, in the face of the almost intolerable drawbacks put upon ’em. You will find thousands of ’em ownin’ their houses and lands; you will find thousands and thousands of wealthy ones; you will find a hundred thousand graduates of schools and colleges, and fillin’ every station—lawyers, clergymen, senators, and every place where merit can win, and the law couldn’t keep them down—they have found their way. That don’t look like entire helplessness and ignorance, duz it? for they have done all this with the tide settin’ full aginst ’em, right in the face of class prejudice, and unjust laws, and customs, and rivalry, and hatred.” “Well, of course,” sez Col. Seybert, “there are some intelligent niggers, and industrious ones; but look at the mass, the ignorant, depraved, totally incompetent ones.” And I sez, “There has been a few in our own race, ignorant, shiftless, lazy, and depraved, who has learnt the colored men to be vicious for 200 years. And as for laziness, it seems as if there _had_ to be some drones amongst the hive of busy workers. Nater has seemed to plan it so for some reason, I can’t tell why, nor Josiah can’t. “Now, with our bees, there are sights of drones that don’t do nuthin’—only steal and eat up what the workers work so hard for. “I don’t see why it is so; it is one of Nater’s mysterys. “And in all communities there has got to be some lazy, shiftless hangers-on. And the strong will have to do till the end of time, so far as I can see, what the Bible tells ’em to: ‘Bear the burdens of the weak.’ “I don’t know as there will ever be any change,” sez I, lookin’ dreamily off beyend Col. Seybert into the everlastin’ strangeness of things present and things to come—“I don’t know as there will ever be any change in that particiler, for the Bible sez expressly: “‘The poor you always have with you.’ “And always means always, I spoze; and poor means poor in every sense of the word, I have calculated. “And that text applies to black and white folks alike.