read it if it is written by a master.
It is not at all taken for granted, admitted, or intimated, that the
Negro writer of the present century is oblivious to any of these
facts. Just as the "coon" melodies have captured the musical realms of
this country, and will remain in the saddle for some time yet; just as
Negro singers and actors are honorably invading the progressive end of
the American stage, so will Negro writers swarm in the great field of
writers, bringing with them a supply of freshness of genius, that will
rejuvenate and give fresh life to the literature of this country.

This is a domain that mocks at legislative restrictions, caste,
exclusionism and what not. Those who will enter and maintain their
ground will be few. All of the stars in the heavens are not fast
flying meteors. There never was such a thing as an army of sages.

Mindful of the fact that his antecedence is small in the world of
letters, the Negro writer is the more ardently inspired when he looks
beyond and catches sight of golden fields into which no swarthy hand
has thrust a sickle.

The world wants more joy; the world cries for more sunshine; the world
begs for a laugh. Mankind gloats over the depiction of deeds both
noble and ignoble. The world delights in that which is novel. The
Negro is a son of caloric. His presence is sunshine. He tells a story
leaving nothing out. He is himself a novelty, and it will not be too
far in the twentieth century before he will take pity on the world and
mankind and write them what they like.

THIRD PAPER.

THE NEGRO AS A WRITER.

BY G. M. McClellan.

[Illustration: Prof. G. M. McClellan]

GEORGE MARION McCLELLAN.

The objection is often raised against schools of higher
education for the Negro race that these people need
instruction, not in Latin, history, geometry and moral
science, but in scientific farming and geometric bed making.
The leaven of truth in this assertion makes a plump denial
hard to return; while its leaven of error is a reminder of
the old antislavery assumption that till the end of time the
Negro must be a hewer of wood and drawer of water, with no
mental life to speak of. This error is best confuted by
proof of the race's actually wide range of intellectual
demands, imaginative sympathies, moral questionings; and for
this reason, if for no other, one thanks Mr. George Marion
McClellan