partial administration of law in meting out punishment to
colored offenders. I know red-handed murderers who walk in this Republic
unwhipped of justice, and I have seen a colored woman sentenced to
prison for weeks for stealing twenty-five cents. I knew a colored girl
who was executed for murder when only a child in years. And it was
through the intervention of a friend of mine, one of the bravest young
men of the South, that a boy of fifteen was saved from the gallows."

"When I look," said Mr. Forest, "at the slow growth of modern
civilization--the ages which have been consumed in reaching our present
altitude, and see how we have outgrown slavery, feudalism, and religious
persecutions, I cannot despair of the future of the race."

"Just now," said Dr. Latimer, "we have the fearful grinding and friction
which comes in the course of an adjustment of the new machinery of
freedom in the old ruts of slavery. But I am optimistic enough to
believe that there will yet be a far higher and better Christian
civilization than our country has ever known."

"And in that civilization I believe the negro is to be an important
factor," said Rev. Cantnor.

"I believe it also," said Miss Delany, hopefully, "and this thought has
been a blessed inspiration to my life. When I come in contact with
Christless prejudices, I feel that my life is too much a part of the
Divine plan, and invested with too much intrinsic worth, for me to be
the least humiliated by indignities that beggarly souls can inflict. I
feel more pitiful than resentful to those who do not know how much they
miss by living mean, ignoble lives."

"My heart," said Iola, "is full of hope for the future. Pain and
suffering are the crucibles out of which come gold more fine than the
pavements of heaven, and gems more precious than the foundations of the
Holy City."

"If," said Mrs. Leroy, "pain and suffering are factors in human
development, surely we have not been counted too worthless to suffer."

"And is there," continued Iola, "a path which we have trodden in this
country, unless it be the path of sin, into which Jesus Christ has not
put His feet and left it luminous with the light of His steps? Has the
negro been poor and homeless? The birds of the air had nests and the
foxes had holes, but the Son of man had not where to lay His head. Has
our name been a synonym for contempt? 'He shall be called a Nazarene.'
Have we been despised and trodden under foot? Christ was