k that our country may give us the assurance of equal
opportunity and protection. When a responsible duty in state is
assigned us, we ask the privilege of discharging the same unharmed.

The rail-splitter upon the sparsely settled lands of Kentucky was
fired with a purpose and a recognition of his place among men. He
toiled on against hindrances and adversities until he had cut his way
to the Capitol of the nation and had become the President of the
nation and the emancipator of four millions of slaves. The colored lad
upon Colonel Lloyd's plantation who heard the barking of the blood
hounds and felt the lash of the task master, likewise he realized that
such was not his place. He sought his place, and to-day America holds
in sacred memory that eloquent and matchless orator Frederick
Douglass.

Fellow-students, despair not, there is hope for us. Our pathway has
been rough, but our privileges have been likewise great. Our souls
have been touched, our thoughts directed and our visions enlarged. We
are standing here upon the base swell of the mount of prosperity,
viewing its lofty summit which towers above prejudice and contempt
into the atmosphere of recognition and respectability. Enemies may
assail us on our ascent, but will climb on: men have reached the top
and we can reach it. Though our ideal is high, if we have the patience
of our fathers and the courage demanded; if with unselfish devotion we
act well our part upon the stage of life, everywhere promoting to the
best of our ability those virtues indispensable in the welfare of a
people, our banner of intellectual and moral power will wave upon the
mountain heights, and its glory will bless our homes, our race, and
our nation.

* * * * *

LOUISIANA CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

BY PROF. GEORGE W. HENDERSON, D.D., STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY, NEW ORLEANS.

A new and highly significant chapter has been written during the past
year in the history of Louisiana. The state now has a new constitution
and the convention, exhausted by the labors of three months, has
adjourned. According to the law which called the convention, the
result is final, this unusual procedure of denying the people the
privilege of voting upon their organic law, being based upon the
example of Mississippi.

The convention just adjourned is the third of its kind in the history
of the South, or of the world, the first being the Mississippi
convention of 1890, the second