Years ago, when the natural capabilities of the races were more under discussion than now, the negro was always made to appear to greater disadvantage than the rest of mankind. The public mind is not yet free from this false theory, nor has the colored man done much of late years to change this opinion. Long years of training of any people to a particular calling, seems to fit them for that vocation more than for any other. Thus, the Jews, inured to centuries of money-lending and pawn-broking, they, as a race, stick to it as if they were created for that business alone.

The training of the Arabs for long excursions through wild deserts, makes them the master roamers of the world. The Gypsies, brought up to camping out and trading in horses, send forth the idea that they were born for it. The black man’s position as a servant, for many generations, has not only made the other races believe that is his legitimate sphere, but he himself feels more at home in a white apron and a towel on his arm, than with a quill behind his ear and a ledger before him.

That a colored man takes to the dining-room and the kitchen, as a duck does to water, only proves that like other races, his education has entered into his blood. This is not theory, this is not poetry; but stern truth. Our people prefer to be servants.

This may be to some extent owing to the fact that the organ of alimentativeness is more prominently formed in the negro’s make-up, than in that of almost any other people.

During several trips in the cars between Nashville and Columbia, I noticed that the boy who sold newspapers and supplied the passengers with fruit, had a basket filled with candy and cakes. The first time I was on his car he offered me the cakes, which I declined, but bought a paper. Watching him I observed that when colored persons entered the car, he would offer them the cakes which they seldom failed to purchase. One day as I took from him a newspaper, I inquired of him why he always offered cakes to the colored passengers. His reply was:—“Oh! they always buy something to eat.”

“Do they purchase more cakes than white people?”

“Yes,” was the response.

“Why do they buy your cakes and candy?” I asked.

“Well, sir, the colored people seem always to be hungry. Never see anything like it. They don’t buy papers, but they are always eating.”

Just then we stopped at Franklin, and three colored passengers came in. “Now,” continued the cake boy, “you’ll see how they’ll take the cakes,” and he started for them, but had to pass their seats to shut the door that had been left open. In going by, one of the men, impatient to get a cake, called, “Here, here, come here wid yer cakes.”

The peddler looked at me and laughed. He sold each one a cake, and yet it was not ten o’clock in the morning.

Not long since, in Massachusetts, I succeeded in getting a young man pardoned from our State prison, where he had been confined for more than ten years, and where he had learned a good trade.

I had already secured him a situation where he was to receive three dollars per day to commence with, with a prospect of an advance of wages.

As we were going to his boarding place, and after I had spent some time in advising him to turn over a new leaf and to try and elevate himself, we passed one of our best hotels. My ward at once stopped, began snuffing as if he “smelt a mice.” I looked at him, watched his countenance as it lighted up and his eyes sparkled; I inquired what was the matter. With a radiant smile he replied, “I smell good wittles; what place is that?”

“It is the Revere House,” I said.

“Wonder if I could get a place to wait on table there?” he asked.

I thought it a sorry comment on my efforts to instil into him some self-respect. This young man had learned the shoemaking trade, and at a McKay machine, I understood that he could earn from three dollars and a half to five dollars per day.

A dozen years ago, two colored young men commenced the manufacture of one of the necessary commodities of the day. After running the establishment some six or eight months successfully, they sold out to white men, who now employ more than one hundred hands. Both of the colored men are at their legitimate callings; one is a waiter in a private house, the other is a porter on a sleeping car.

The failure of these young men to carry on a manufacturing business was mainly owing to a want of training, in a business point of view. No man is fit for a profession or a trade, unless he has learned it.

Extravagance in dress is a great and growing evil with our people. I am acquainted with a lady in Boston who wears a silk dress costing one hundred and thirty dollars. She lives in two rooms, and her husband is a hair-dresser.

Since the close of the war, a large number of freedmen settled in Massachusetts, where they became servants, the most of them. These people surpass in dress, the wealthiest merchants of the city.

A young man, now a servant in a private house, sports a sixty-dollar overcoat while he works for twenty dollars per month.

A woman who cooks for five dollars per week, in Arlington Street, swings along every Sunday in a hundred-dollar silk dress, and a thirty-dollar hat. She cannot read or write.

Go to our churches on the Sabbath, and see the silk, the satin, the velvet, and the costly feathers, and talk with the uneducated wearers, and you will see at once the main hindrance to self-elevation.

To elevate ourselves and our children, we must cultivate self-denial. Repress our appetites for luxuries and be content with clothing ourselves in garments becoming our means and our incomes. The adaptation and the deep inculcation of the principles of total abstinence from all intoxicants. The latter is a pre-requisite for success in all the relations of life.

Emerging from the influence of oppression, taught from early experience to have no confidence in the whites, we have little or none in our own race, or even in ourselves.

We need more self-reliance, more confidence in the ability of our own people; more manly independence, a higher standard of moral, social, and literary culture. Indeed, we need a union of effort to remove the dark shadow of ignorance that now covers the land. While the barriers of prejudice keep us morally and socially from educated white society, we must make a strong effort to raise ourselves from the common level where emancipation and the new order of things found us.

We possess the elements of successful development; but we need live men and women to make this development. The last great struggle for our rights; the battle for our own civilization, is entirely with ourselves, and the problem is to be solved by us.

We must use our spare time, day and night, to educate ourselves. Let us have night schools for the adults, and not be ashamed to attend them. Encourage our own literary men and women; subscribe for, and be sure and pay for papers published by colored men. Don’t stop to inquire if the paper will live; but encourage it, and make it live.

With the exception of a few benevolent societies, we are separated as far from each other as the east is from the west.