egister_, XXI, p. 163; taken from
_The New York Commercial Advertiser_.

* * * * *

A MORALIST. A white cooper called upon a Negro who owned a fine farm
near Cincinnati and expressed a desire to purchase some stave timber
from him. The Negro inquired as to what use the cooper would make of
it. The latter replied that he had a contract to make some whisky
barrels.

"Well, Sir," was the prompt reply, "I have the timber and want the
money, but no man can purchase a single stave or hoop pole, or a
particle of grain from me for that purpose."

The cooper, of course, became unusually angry on receiving such a
stern reproof and contemptuously addressed this man of color, calling
him a "Nigger."

"That is very true," mildly replied the Negro. "I can't help that, but
I _can_ help selling my timber to make whisky barrels, and I mean to
do it."--_The Weekly Herald and Philanthropist_, May 13, 1846.

* * * * *

A BENEVOLENT NEGRO. Before the Northwest Territory became disturbed by
the influx of free Negroes and fugitives running away from persecution
in the South, there had been enough trouble with white vagrants to
lead to drastic laws for the protection of certain communities.
Michigan, which did not until 1827 pass a measure dealing especially
with undesirable Negroes, had prior to this time a law providing for
selling idle and dissolute persons at auction. At one of the sales in
1821 a Negro bought a white man and ordered him to follow his master,
and the order was obeyed. But the benevolent black took his servant to
the steamboat, paid his passage and restored him his freedom, making
himself satisfied with sending the white vagrant out of the
territory.--_Niles Register_, XXI, p. 214.

BOOK REVIEWS

_Harvard Studies._ I. _Varia Africana._ I. ORIC BATES, Editor, F. H.
STERNS, Asst. Editor. Introduction by THEODORE ROOSEVELT. The African
Department of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, Cambridge,
1917. Quarto. Pp. 292.

In the introduction to the Harvard African studies ex-President
Roosevelt describes the enterprise which this volume represents as
"the first serious attempt by Americans to contribute to the real
study of the African." He might have added, with almost equal truth,
that it is the first serious attempt by Americans to study the Negro.

Books have been written by Americans about the black man. Howard
University, Washington,