illustrate,” she said, “the state of feeling between the two races in Mobile by an incident last summer. There was an election coming off in the City Government, and I knew that the reformers wanted and needed the colored vote. I went, therefore, to some of the chief men, who knew me and had confidence in me, for I had had business relations with many of them [she had kept a fashionable boarding-house], and told them that I wanted the Opera-house for the colored people to give an entertainment and exhibition in. The request was extraordinary. Nobody but white people had ever been admitted to the Opera-house. But, after some hesitation and consultation, the request was granted. We gave the exhibition, and the white people all attended. It was really a beautiful affair, lovely tableaux, with gorgeous dresses, recitations, etc., and everybody was astonished that the colored people had so much taste and talent, and had got on so far in education. They said they were delighted and surprised, and they liked it so well that they wanted the entertainment repeated—it was given for one of our charities—but I was too wise for that. I didn’t want to run the chance of destroying the impression by repeating, and I said we would wait a while, and then show them something better. Well, the election came off in August, and everything went all right, and now the colored people in Mobile can have anything they want. There is the best feeling between the races. I tell you we should get on beautifully if the politicians would let us alone. It is politics that has made all the trouble in Alabama and in Mobile.” And I learned that in Mobile, as in many other places, the negroes were put in minor official positions, the duties of which they were capable of discharging, and had places in the police. On “Louisiana Day” in the Exposition the colored citizens took their full share of the parade and the honors. Their societies marched with the others, and the races mingled on the grounds in unconscious equality of privileges. Speeches were made, glorifying the State and its history, by able speakers, the Governor among them; but it was the testimony of Democrats of undoubted Southern orthodoxy that the honors of the day were carried off by a colored clergyman, an educated man, who united eloquence with excellent good-sense, and who spoke as a citizen of Louisiana, proud of his native State, dwelling with richness of allusion upon its history. It was a perfectly manly speech in the assertion of the rights and the position of his race, and it breathed throughout the same spirit of good-will and amity in a common hope of progress that characterized the talk of the colored woman commissioner of Mobile. It was warmly applauded, and accepted, so far as I heard, as a matter of course.