ent Christian agencies for the reduction and
destruction of crime in its germinal state, and are a display of wise
and humane statesmanship on the part of legislators. The white people
of Virginia, ever responsive to appeals in behalf of human need, made
possible the Virginia Manual Labor School at Broad Neck Farm, Hanover,
Virginia. It was this sentiment in behalf of moral reform among Negro
children and youths that brought to the aid of this institution the
interested concern of a man of wealth and national influence, whose
sympathy for the poor and ignorant of his countrymen, white and black,
is as broad and far-reaching as ignorance and human suffering.[7] This
reformatory, opened September 12, 1899, and aided by the state
February 5, 1900, began with a nucleus of five Negro boys, and has now
under its guardianship fifty-two children. It has thus early
demonstrated conclusively that saving and redemptive elements of
character exist in Negro children no less than in those of other
races; also that for tractableness and responsiveness to kindly
influences, delinquent Negro children show themselves of legitimate
kinship to that race among whom, as the classic writer tells us, "the
gods delighted to disport themselves--the gentle Ethiopians."

I know how disposed as a race we are to wilt, to lose heart, and
complain, in the glare of new exhibitions of prejudice, such as harass
us in our native Virginia, and our brethren in other parts of the
country. To such, I put the question: "By courage can we not lessen
misfortune? Yes! A thousand times yes! Courage turns ignoble agony
into beautiful martyrdom. Its alchemy is universal. Is the stake a
misfortune to the martyr? It is his dearest fortune. Is oppression,
prejudice, or ignorance, a misfortune to the reformer? It is the very
condition of his reform. Is misunderstanding, injustice, suspicion, or
contempt a misfortune to the earnest man or woman anywhere who is
trying to guide his life by a more celestial trigonometry than petty
minds can conceive? In one sense these things are to be deplored but
in another and deeper sense nothing is to be dreaded that can be faced
and known by an unfrighted human spirit. A misfortune bravely met is a
fortune, and the world is full of people happy because bravely
unhappy."

FOOTNOTES:

[6] _The American Negro of To-day._ Contemporary Review, February,
1900.

[7] The late Mr. C. P. Huntington of New York.

TOPIC XXXII.

THE