they fall a prey to the
more hardy or unscrupulous.

Mr. Magoun follows out his train of thought in the following logical
deductions:

Plainly, if this opportunity for furnishing the skilled
labor of the South hereafter (as he has furnished the
unskilled heretofore) slips away from the black man, he can
never rise. In the race for property, influence, and all
success in life, the industrially educated white
man--whatever may be said of Southern white men "hating to
work"--will outstrip him. Before an ecclesiastical body of
representative colored men at Memphis, in the autumn of
1880, I urged this consideration, when asked to advise them
about education, as the one most germane to their interests;
and preachers and laymen, and their white teachers,
approved every word, and gave me most hearty thanks. I
counseled aspiring young men to abstain from unsuitable
attempts at merely literary training; from overlooking the
intermediate links of culture in striving after something
"beyond their measure;" from expecting any more to be shot
up into the United States Senatorships, etc., by a
revolution which had already wellnigh spent its first
exceptional force (as a few extraordinary persons are thrown
up into extraordinary distinction in the beginning of
revolutions); from ambitious rejection of the steady,
thorough, toilsome methods of fitting themselves for
immediate practical duties and nearer spheres, by which
alone any class is really and healthfully elevated. To shirk
elementary preparation and aspire after the results of
scholarship without its painstaking processes is THE
_temptation of colored students_, as I know by having taught
them daily in college classes. I rejoice in every such
student who really climbs the heights of learning with
exceeding joy. But a far greater proportion than has thus
far submitted to thorough-going preparation for skilled
labor must do so, or there is no great future for them in
this land as a race.

But already the absurdity of beginning at the apex of the educational
fabric instead of at the base is being perceived by those who have in
hand the education of colored youth. A large number of colleges are
adding industrial to their other features, and with much success, and
a larger number of educators are agitating the wis