ether that work be tilling the soil or
plying a handicraft, healing the sick or enlightening the ignorant,
uplifting the lowly or administering spiritual solace, is 'practical' in
the highest and best significance of that term.... Traditional branches
of study have lost much of their talismanic value. The so-called higher
education is no longer confined to the classic tongues of two famous
far-off peoples. The pedagogical watchword is _method_ rather than
subject-matter. The higher method of inquiry and investigation can be
applied to the growing roots of living plants as well as to the dry
stems of a dead language. The problems growing out of the population of
Alabama or Florida are as intricate in their relation, and as
far-reaching in their consequence, and, withal, as important a subject
for study, as any ever involved in the European peninsulas."

It seems to be generally held by such writers and their readers that the
mission of negroes who have received a good college training is to be
teachers and leaders to the more commonplace members of their own race,
and it is thought that a proportion of one in two hundred needs to have
the knowledge which will enable him to lead, and so benefit his fellows.
There must be tact, however; the negro student must have his craft well
ballasted or he may lose self-control, which may possibly lead to
somewhat comical results. Thus, Mr Miller tells of "A circular issued by
a young man, scarcely thirty years of age, the sum-total of whose
knowledge would be scarcely equal to that of a Yale sophomore, who
advertises himself as Rev. ----, A.M., B.D., Ph.D., D.D. It is more than
likely that the majority of the congregation of this over-bedecked
preacher can neither read nor write. What these humble people need is
sound knowledge and simple sense.... The negro race is characterised by
boisterousness of manners and extravagant forms of taste. As if to
correct such deficiencies, their higher education hitherto has been
largely concerned with Greek and Latin literature, the norms of modern
culture. The advanced negro student became acquainted with Homer and
Virgil before he had Shakespeare and Milton. It is just here that our
educational critics are apt to become excited. The spectacle of a negro
wearing eyeglasses, and declaiming in classic phrases about 'the walls
of lofty Rome,' and 'the wrath of Achilles,' upsets their critical
balance and composure. We have so often listened to the gr