and inebriate schools,
and they have closed 56 out of 113 prisons and jails in ten years, and
thereby reduced to that extent the amount of material for the
manufacture of criminals.

Said Judge Calhoun, of a recorder's court in Georgia:

"I tremble when I contemplate the future of little boys who come
before me for the first time, and are sentenced to the chain-gang.
Some of them are bright-faced and intelligent; some are orphans; many
thoroughly penitent; and, I believe, nearly all could be reclaimed,
could they be sent to a reform school and surrounded with an
atmosphere that would benefit instead of contaminate."

Mrs. Helen Cook, wife of Hon. John F. Cook, of Washington, D. C., has
established an organization in the District of Columbia, known as "The
Woman's League," which is doing a wonderful work in reducing the
number of those who are brought into the courts to be justly or
unjustly dealt with. Let the good women of the race throughout the
country follow her example and do something to rescue the perishing.

In conclusion, let us hope and believe with the widow of the Sage of
Anacostia, that "Meanwhile Hampton and Wilberforce, Howard and Shaw
and Fiske and Atlanta and Tuskegee and other like institutions are
silently setting the seal of manhood and womanhood upon a race whose
face, with ours, is set toward a higher and better civilization."

SECOND PAPER.

IS THE CRIMINAL NEGRO JUSTLY DEALT WITH IN THE COURTS OF THE SOUTH?

BY ATTORNEY I. L. PURCELL.

[Illustration: I. L. Purcell]

ISAAC LAWRENCE PURCELL.

Isaac Lawrence Purcell, the subject of this sketch, was born
July 17, 1857, in Winnsboro, S. C. His father, John W.
Purcell, by occupation a carpenter, was born in 1832 in
Charleston, S. C., being one of the old free families.

Isaac Lawrence first attended a school provided by the
Episcopal Church for Colored youths. He afterwards attended
the public schools of his city and, in 1871, entered
Brainard Institute, Chester, S. C., where he remained one
term. In 1872 he entered Biddle University at Charlotte, N. C.,
where he remained until in the Fall of 1873, when the
color line was removed at the South Carolina University. He
entered the competitive examination for the scholarship in
the South Carolina University from his county, being the
only Colored applicant. In the Fall of 1873 he entered the
Sout