her aid in the preparation of their lessons. At the age of
eleven years Rosetta became her father's assistant in the
library. She copied for him, wrapped, addressed and mailed
eight hundred copies of the "North Star" each week.

Rosetta Douglass married December 24, 1863, Nathan Sprague,
who, like her father, had been a victim of the slave-holding
power.

The problems of life are manifold. Wherever we turn questions of
moment are presented to us for solution and settlement. At no period
in the history of the American Negro has his status as a man and an
American citizen been so closely scrutinized and criticised as at the
present time.

The galling chain and merciless lash were the instruments used to
accomplish the humiliation and degradation of the African. Avarice was
the factor in the composition of the character of a large number of
the white men of America that wrought such ravishes in the well-being
of the African.

To-day, after the short space of thirty-six years has passed over him,
from the deep degradation of centuries the descendants of these
Africans are wrestling with the situation as it exists to-day. Through
the avarice of the white man in the past the black man's physical,
moral and mental development was sacrificed. To-day egotism stalks
abroad to crush, if possible, his hopes and his aims, while he is
struggling from the effects of his thraldom.

This latter process is more subtle in its operation--placing, as it
does, a weapon that can with confidence be used by the most inferior
and degraded ones of the white race--so that _color_ and not
_character_ is made the determining factor of respectability and
worth, and as the target is to the archer, so is the Negro to the
white man.

Notwithstanding that the presentation of such facts are not flattering
to the white man or pleasurable to the black man, they are facts which
are to be considered.

Rapid changes have already been wrought in the condition of the
American Negro. His capabilities and possibilities as a factor in the
nation have been marked and encouraging, and yet there are labors to
be performed to further obtain and maintain his position in the land
of his birth. The Negro is but a man, with the frailties that bound
humanity, and cannot be expected to rid himself of them in any way
different from methods adopted for the betterment of mankind
generally. In view of much that has inspired the friends of