the goal, as rapidly as
some of us might wish to see him, but it is a matter for
congratulation, that he is not retrograding, nor even standing still,
but is moving on. Poor? Yes, but he isn't always going to be poor.
Ignorant? Yes, but he isn't always going to be ignorant. The progress
that he has already made in these directions shows clearly what the
future is to be. Knowledge is power; wealth is power, and that power
the Negro is getting. He is not always going to be a mere hewer of
wood and a drawer of water; he is not always going to be crude,
ignorant. American prejudice is strong, I know; it is full of infernal
hate, I know, but in the long run it will be found to be no match for
the power which comes from wealth and intelligence.

(3.) I am hopeful because I have faith in the ultimate triumph of
right. You remember what Lowell says in his "Elegy on the Death of Dr.
Channing:"

"Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep
Of everlasting Soul her strength abides,
From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap,
Through Nature's veins her strength, undying tides.

* * * * *

"I watch the circle of the eternal years,
And read forever in the storied page
One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears--
One onward step of Truth from age to age.

"The poor are crushed; the tyrants link their chain;
The poet sings through narrow dungeon-grates;
Man's hope lies quenched;--and, lo! with steadfast gain
Freedom doth forge her mail of adverse fates.

"Men slay the prophets; fagot, rack, and cross
Make up the groaning records of the past;
But Evil's triumphs are her endless loss,
And sovereign Beauty wins the soul at last."

* * * * *

"From off the starry mountain-peak of song,
The spirit shows me, in the coming time,
An earth unwithered by the foot of wrong,
A race revering its own soul sublime."

And in the "Ode to France," from which I quoted on last Sabbath, the
same glorious thought is expressed:--

"And surely never did thine altars glance
With purer fires than now in France;
While, in their bright white flashes,
Wrong's shadow, backward cast,
Waves cowering o'er the ashes
Of the dead, blaspheming past,
O'er the shapes of fallen giants,
His own unburied brood,
Whose dead hand