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Updated: September 28, 2025
At the end of the war, foods and commodities had gone up to prices that were impossible for the Negro to pay. Ham, for example, cost 40¢ and 50¢ a pound; lard was 25¢; cotton was two dollars a bushel. Douglas' father taught him all that he knew about carpentry and bricklaying, and the two were in demand to repair, remodel, or build houses for the white people.
In towns, boys who begin to earn a living when they enter their teens may be taught in evening schools to practice the craft of carpentry, bricklaying, plastering, plumbing, gas fitting, etc., as is shown successfully in the Auchmuty schools of New York. Trade schools they are called; schools of practice for workmen would be a better name.
"But all this is no rule for a gentleman born," pursued the good-natured Barny, in answer, I suppose, to the sigh which I uttered; "nor is it any disparagement to him if he has not done as well in a place like America, where he had not the means; not being used to bricklaying and slaving with his hands, and striving as we did.
I replied, with tolerable composure: "I do not think, sir, that bricklaying will admit of very genteel clothing, nor do I think that the vocation will suit me. I have flattered myself, sir, that my talents " "Oh, you have talents, then, have you? Well, it is fortunate that the discovery has been made in season."
Seems to take rather a humorous view of the position. Kind of Mark Tapley. Says he can't say he does like it, but then he must like it! Ha, ha! Is a slater by trade. Been out of work some time; younger men naturally get the work. Gets a bit of bricklaying sometimes; can turn his hand to anything. Goes miles and gets nothing. Earned one and twopence this week at holding horses.
Well your hanner, being obliged to give up my bricklaying, I took to fiddling, to which I had always a natural inclination, and played about the streets, and at fairs, and wakes, and weddings.
It was to the trade of bricklaying I was bred, and bricklaying I followed till at last, getting my leg smashed, not by falling off the ladder, but by a row in the fair, I was obliged to give it up, for how could I run up the ladder with a patten on my foot, which they put on to make my broken leg as long as the other.
There is probably in their quickness of eye and readiness of hand something admirable; but this is not what I ask the reader to admire: not the carpentering, nor the bricklaying, nor anything that he can presently see and understand, but the choice of the curve, and the shaping of the numbered stones, and the appointment of that number; there were many things to be known and thought upon before these were decided.
Again she knocked, and bent her ear. The mason sang aloud: "Some day dis worl' come to an en', I don't know how, I don't know when " She turned the door-knob and murmured, "Anna!" The bricklaying clinked, tapped and scraped on. The workman hummed again his last two lines. "Who is it?" asked a feigned voice which she knew so instantly to be Kincaid's that every beat of her heart jarred her frame.
The awe that dwells in churches fell upon me as I crossed the threshold an awe I never fail to feel heightened in many cases, no doubt, by the sense of antiquity and of art, but an awe which I have felt all the same in crossing the threshold of an old Puritan conventicle, as the place where men worship and have worshipped the God of their fathers, although for art there was only the science of common bricklaying, and for beauty staring ugliness.
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