so heavy a crust
of ignorance, poverty and race prejudice as was done by this boy born
on a slave plantation, stealing his education, fleeing from his slave
home and then achieving for himself a rank among the foremost men of
the nation in intelligence, eloquence and of personal influence in the
great anti-slavery struggle of this country. He has achieved honors in
the public service of the nation, and has faithfully and honorably
fulfilled every trust laid upon him.

Mr. Douglass is among the last survivors of that band of Abolitionists
that were so potent in their influence in arousing the nation to the
evils of slavery. The recent death of Theodore D. Weld, in his
ninety-first year, recalls a name now almost forgotten, but that two
generations ago indicated the foremost orator in the anti-slavery
ranks. The poet of anti-slavery, Whittier, has gone recently, and now
the most conspicuous name left of that noble band is that of Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The American Missionary Association has reason to congratulate itself
that its last annual meeting was made memorable by the presence of Mr.
Douglass, and its vast audience stirred most deeply by his eloquent
address. In that address he expressed his gratitude for himself and
his people for the work done by the Association in their behalf. And
in a letter subsequently addressed to the senior secretary of the
Association, he says, in speaking of that address: "I am very glad to
have been able thus publicly to record my sense of the value of the
great work of the Association in saving my people. I am a friend of
free thought and free inquiry, but I find them to be no substitute for
the work of educating the ignorant and lifting up the lowly. Time and
toil have nearly taken me from the lecture field, but I still have a
good word to say in the cause to which the American Missionary
Association is devoted."

ITEMS.

Of the twelve millions of families now in the United States, it is
said that one million cannot secure the needed work to procure the
luxuries and comforts of life. On this basis the one and a half
millions of colored families are at a special disadvantage. They have
to contend not only against the hard times, but against the immense
disadvantages of race prejudice.

* * * * *

The appointment of Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, to be a member of the
Board of Indian Commissioners was an appointment eminently fit to be