heological schools of the land, and of all names,
shut their doors against the black man. An eminent friend of mine, the
noble, fervent, gentlemanly Rev. Theodore S. Wright, then a Presbyterian
licentiate, was taking private lessons in theology, at Princeton; and
for this offense was kicked out of one of its halls.

In the year 1832 Miss Prudence Crandall opened a private school for the
education of colored girls; and it set the whole State of Connecticut in
a flame. Miss Crandall was mobbed, and the school was broken up.

The year following, the trustees of Canaan Academy in New Hampshire
opened its doors to Negro youths; and this act set the people of that
state on fire. The farmers of the region assembled with 90 yoke of oxen,
dragged the Academy into a swamp, and a few weeks afterward drove the
black youths from the town.

These instances will suffice. They evidence the general statement, _i. e._
that the American mind has refused to foster and to cultivate the Negro
intellect. Join to this a kindred fact, of which there is the fullest
evidence. Impelled, at times, by pity, a modicum of schooling and
training has been given the Negro; but even this, almost universally,
with reluctance, with cold criticism, with microscopic scrutiny, with
icy reservation, and at times, with ludicrous limitations.

Cheapness characterizes almost all the donations of the American people
to the Negro:--Cheapness, in all the past, has been the regimen provided
for the Negro in every line of his intellectual, as well as his lower
life. And so, cheapness is to be the rule in the future, as well for his
higher, as for his lower life:--cheap wages and cheap food, cheap and
rotten huts; cheap and dilapidated schools; cheap and stinted weeks of
schooling; cheap meeting houses for worship; cheap and ignorant
ministers; cheap theological training; and now, cheap learning, culture
and civilization!

Noble exceptions are found in the grand literary circles in which Mr.
Howells moves--manifest in his generous editing of our own Paul Dunbar's
poems. But this generosity is not general, even in the world of American
letters.

You can easily see this in the attempt, now-a-days, to side-track the
Negro intellect, and to place it under limitations never laid upon any
other class.

The elevation of the Negro has been a moot question for a generation
past. But even to-day what do we find the general reliance of the
American mind in determinating th