ndreds of thousands of dollars during the ten
years he has been connected with this great educational
institution of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The
Freedmen's Aid and Southern Educational Society has educated
hundreds and thousands of men and women of our race, and has
an average attendance of over seven thousand young men and
women of color in its schools every year. Dr. Mason is thus
brought in contact with more young men and women of the race
than any other Negro in America. And the whole race is very
largely indebted to him for the work which, through this
institution, he is accomplishing.

As an orator the Doctor has no superiors, and few equals. He
is in great demand all over the country, especially in the
North. We are told that he has been offered $6,000 per year
with a guarantee for ten years, if he would resign his
present position and take the lecture platform. This offer
he has constantly refused preferring to remain in the work
where he can be more useful to his own people.

During a recent trip to Europe he was in constant demand for
lectures in London, Glasgow, Belfast and among the English
colony in France.

The progress made by the Negro since emancipation has challenged the
admiration and wonder of the world. In all the annals of the world's
history, there is no parallel to it, and this progress, remarkable as
it is, has been in all lines, and in all departments of his life and
activity. Indeed, it would be quite a problem to be able to declare in
what particular line he has made the most progress. To secure some
adequate conception of what he is to-day, we must compare him with
what he was yesterday. In no other way can we come to any
comprehensive idea of the progress which he has made and the work
which he has accomplished.

A generation ago, he had practically nothing. He started out with
scarcely a name--poor, ignorant, degraded, demoralized, as slavery
left him. Without a home, without a foot of land, without the true
sense of real manhood, ragged, destitute, so freedom found him. He
stood at one end of the cotton row with his master at the other and as
he stepped out into the new and inexperienced life before him his
master still claimed him and the very clothes upon his back. Under
these peculiar circumstances and amid these peculiar difficulties he
began life for himself. He had, howe