embers that for the last forty years the most helpful
men of the race have come from the ranks of its teachers, and few of those
who have finally done any big thing, but have at some time or other held
the scepter of authority in a school. They may have changed later and
grown, indeed they must have done so, but the fact remains that their
poise, their discipline, the impulse for their growth came largely from
their work in the school room.

There is perhaps no more notable example of this phase of Negro life than
the Hon. Richard Theodore Greener, our present Consul at Vladivostok. He
was, I believe, the first of our race to graduate from Harvard and he has
always been regarded as one of the most scholarly men who, through the
touch of Negro blood, belongs to us. He has been historian, journalist and
lecturer, but back of all this he was a teacher; and for years after his
graduation he was a distinguished professor at the most famous of all the
old Negro colleges. This institution is now a thing of the past, but the
men who knew it in its palmy days speak of it still with longing and
regret. It is claimed, and from the names and qualities of the men, not
without justice, that no school for the higher education of the black man
has furnished a finer curriculum or possessed a better equipped or more
efficient faculty. Among these, Richard T. Greener was a bright,
particular star.

After the passing of the school, Mr. Greener turned to other activities.
His highest characteristics were a fearless patience and a hope that
buoyed him up through days of doubt and disappointment. Author and editor
he was, but he was not satisfied with these. Beyond their scope were
higher things that beckoned him. Politics, or perhaps better, political
science, allured him, and he applied himself to a course that brought him
into intimate contact with the leaders of his country, white and black. A
man of wide information, great knowledge and close grasp of events he made
himself invaluable to his party and then with his usual patience awaited
his reward.

The story of how he came to his own cannot be told without just a shade of
bitterness darkening the smile that one must give to it all. The cause for
which he had worked triumphed. The men for whom he had striven gained
their goal and now, Greener must be recognized, but--

Vladivostok, your dictionary will tell you, is a sea-port in the maritime
Province of Siberia, situated on the Golde