r, was awarded the first premium for
his work, for which he is to receive a diploma and medal. Our esteemed
townsman has entered a new field and ascended to the topmost round of
the ladder at one bound.

A COLORED PRIZE WINNER.--Give a colored man a fair show and he is
certain to give a good account of himself. One of the notable college
contests in Illinois is known as the Swan Oratorical Contest, and is
held annually at Lombard University, at Galesburg. This contest was held
Thursday night of last week. The first prize was awarded to Burt Wilson,
a colored student, who lives at Galesburg, and is one of the most
promising scholars in the university. His oration is said to have been
an unusually brilliant effort.

WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE.--In the South there are now 16,000 colored
teachers, 1,000,000 pupils, 17,000 in the male and female high schools,
and 3,000,000 worshipers in the churches. There are sixty normal
schools, fifty colleges and universities, and twenty-five theological
seminaries. The colored people pay taxes on nearly $200,000,000 worth of
property valuation. This is a wonderful showing for a race that has two
hundred years of slavery and four thousand years of barbarism back of
it; it needs no silent sympathy or patient waiting, when in twenty years
it makes such a showing. American generosity has done for the South in
twenty years what statesmanship has failed to do in over a century; but
generosity should not be depended upon, as even that can reach a limit.

SUCCESSFUL IN BUSINESS.--North Carolina has a colored man whose business
success is hard to find surpassed by even the white people. The Concord
_Times_, a white journal, gives the following interesting sketch of his
career:

He was born a slave, and until he was twenty-one years of age, never had
a copper of his own. Possessed of a keen and adaptable mind, he has by
his energy and untiring efforts accumulated a competency, equalled by
few of his race in the South.

Warren Coleman commenced business here in 1879. He has lost everything
by fire three times,--one time meeting with a loss of $7,000 and no
insurance. Various purses of money were made up and sent him at this
time, all of which he very nobly returned. But by pluck and energy he
rose again.

He owns four farms, amounting in all to some 300 acres of land, and
employs on them twenty regular hands. He is the owner of ninety-eight
tenement houses and is still adding to the list