up so much of the interest of our journey. Through institutions
like this, a problem suggested to me in one of your streets will find
solution. I visited the Republican State Convention in session, to
see ex-Governor Kellogg, whom I had known in his boyhood among the
Green Mountains, and who was one of {pg 212} the officers of the
convention. While there I listened to several speeches from colored
men, which, for clearness of thought and pathos of oratory, would have
done credit to any public speaker in the country. I have since
learned, with great pleasure, that several of these gentlemen were
graduates of this University. On leaving the convention, when scarcely
a block away, I met a well-dressed gentleman, and naturally fell into
conversation about the convention. The gentleman claimed to have
inherited the blood of Boston, but had lived twenty years in New
Orleans. With respect to the convention, he said: "I tell you, sir,
the white people here will never consent to be governed by a lot of
ignorant Negroes, like those in that convention!" I have thought on
this statement, and coming here, I find its solution. Knowledge is
power, whether its possessor be white or black, and unless the white
people of the South make the education of their children more of a
paramount interest than heretofore, they will find the learning and
muscle, the precedents of wealth, combined in the colored race. The
rural population will find that they need for themselves and their
children a better knowledge than can be acquired from the court-house,
saloon, or the village tavern.

It is an interesting thought, that these students will go from this
institution back to their low-down homes on the borders of rice fields
and cotton plantations, where their fathers and mothers have toiled in
slavery, and by an inspiration that is divine, will dissipate the dark
memories of the past, and will show, by precept and example, that
sanctification of spirit and purity of life will shape the destiny of
their race for coming time. Again we thank you for this interview.

JOHN M. STEARNS

* * * * *

VALUED APPRECIATION.

B.M. Zettler, Esq., who for many years has been in charge of
the public schools of Macon, Ga., and who has, therefore,
eminent qualifications for pronouncing judgment in regard to
schools and school work, has written the following in
reference to the Lewis Normal Institute of Macon. We