only carried into practical execution what had already been conceived and made known by his less favored contemporary, to whom but little if any public credit was ever given for the suggestion. Like all normal human beings he had a mind and used it in such a way as to accomplish the most possible with expenditure of the least amount of energy. And thus there was proven to be a real and true inventive and ever active genius running through the very being of this enslaved people.
And now with the opportunities which many of them are well using to improve both their mental and material condition the present is only a positive index to the disclosure of much of this latent force in the near future.
Still more strange and amusing is the fact that it was left for a negro female to pave the way and introduce the silk culture into the great and wealthy State of Alabama.
As it is the custom of many of our more favored friends to attribute any of our important accomplishments to the "white blood infused into the veins of some of us" we take pleasure in calling attention to her portrait, which proves to be that of a pure African.
This woman was Ruth Lowery, of Huntsville, Alabama. While we are thus musing with a mind filled with more facts than we have either space or ability to write we are pleased to quote the following from Frank Leslie’s Newspaper of August 17, 1878, which is quite convincing:
