esults will surely come. Many of them have already shaken off their
intellectual fetters so that not only are their bodies free but their
minds are also. That is why I feel that all our citizens should do
everything in their power to help them, and try and make up to them for
the injustices they have suffered. It is not enough to take them out of
physical slavery; we should break the chains of their mental
imprisonment as well by giving them schools, trades, and such other
training as is within their mental scope."

"I'm afraid I never thought of the negroes that way," confessed Carl.

"A great many persons older than you do not," Captain Dillingham
returned kindly. "But when you do think of them from that angle you
cannot but honor the more highly those colored persons who have
achieved positions of importance. There are now in our country colored
lawyers, doctors, teachers, poets, and writers. Who can tell what their
background has been or measure the mental exertion that has brought
them where they are to-day? Wherever we meet them we should give them a
hand up. We owe it to them because of our own greater opportunity."

The little man stopped to light his pipe.

"Now see where talking about picking cotton has led me," grumbled he
whimsically. "A pretty distance I've wandered from my subject! Well,
you mustn't touch me off on the topic of the colored race again. I have
seen many abuses of the negroes in my day, both on shipboard and
ashore, and the subject turns me hot. Just how the evils of
cotton-gathering are to be avoided I do not know. We must wait, I fear,
until some clever individual bobs up with a scheme that does away with
hand harvesting of cotton. In the meantime the only remedy left us is
to vary the work of the men and women who toil at it as much as is
possible."

"I wish, Uncle Frederick, you would tell us just how the cotton is
gathered," said Mary, who had joined the group.

Captain Dillingham flashed the girl one of his rare smiles.

"I don't know, my dear, just how much more there is to tell," declared
he. "Of course, if you have ever picked currants or blackberries you
will realize something of the constant bending and stooping that goes
with the industry and will understand how hard it is on the back. Then
there is the continual standing, a tiresome business at best. Besides,
mechanically as the task is rated, it is not such an easy one after
all, for the cotton fibers stick firmly to the