AUNT MANDY'S INVESTMENT
about them is their money; but what do we do with it when we git it? I'll tell you what we do with it; we take an' give it right back to the white folks fu' somef'n' or other we want, an' so they git ouah labor, an' oh money to. Ain't that the truth?"
There were cries of "Yes, indeed, that's so; you're right, sho!"
"Well, now, do you want this hyeah thing to go on?"
"No!" from a good many voices.
"Then how are we going to stop it?" Mr. Ruggles paused. No one answered. "Why," he resumed, "by buyin' from ourselves, that's how. We all put in so much ev'ry week till we git enough to buy things of ouah own; the we'll jest pat'onise ouahselves. Don't you see it can't fail?"
The audience did.
Brother Jeremiah Buford rose and "hea'tily concuhed in what the brothah had said;" and dapper little Spriggins, who was said to be studying law, and to be altogether as smart as a whip, expressed his pleasure that a man of such enterprise had come among them to wake the coloured people up to a sense for their condition and to
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