of graduates every year. The educational outlook for the
race is certainly very encouraging.

In view of these two factors--the growing desire on the part of the
Negro for material possessions, the fact that he is actually acquiring
property, and his growing intelligence--I see signs of a brighter
future for him. These are elements of power that will make themselves
felt. You may deprive a poor and ignorant people of their rights, and
succeed in keeping them deprived of them, but you can't hope to do
that when these conditions are changed; and the point to which I am
directing attention here, is that this change is taking place. All
that has been done, and is being done to stimulate in the Negro this
principle of acquisitiveness, and to increase his thirst for
knowledge, is a harbinger of a better day. Every dollar saved, or
properly invested; every atom of brain power that is developed, is a
John the Baptist in the wilderness, crying, Make straight the pathway
of the Negro. In proportion as the race rises in intelligence and
wealth, the valleys will be filled and the mountains will be leveled,
that now stand in the way of his progress, in the way of the complete
recognition of all of his rights. Ignatius Donnelly, in that
remarkable book of his, "Doctor Huguet," which some of you, doubtless,
have read, would seem to teach the opposite of this. He attempts to
show that never mind what the intellectual attainments of the Negro
may be--he may be a Doctor Huguet, learned with all the learning of
the schools, and cultured with all the culture of the ages--still
there is no chance for him, there is no hope of his being recognized.
The story as told by him is, at first, quite staggering and terribly
depressing. But when we remember that, according to the story, there
was but one Doctor Huguet with a black skin, and that he was poor, and
that all the rest of his race were poor and ignorant, light breaks in
upon the darkness, the awful pall which it casts upon us, is at once
lifted. How will it be when instead of one Doctor Huguet there are
hundreds and thousands of them, scholarly men and women, cultivated
men and women, men and women of wealth, of large resources? It will be
very different. If the Negro was indifferent to education; if he was
actually getting poorer, then we might lose heart; but, thank God, the
very opposite is true. His face is in the right direction. He may not
be pressing on as rapidly as he might towards