tion, and which can be drawn out of them,
and thus secure form and reality.

The basis of this revolution must be character. That is the rock on
which our whole race in America is to be built up. Our leaders are to
address themselves to this main and master endeavor--viz., to free
them from false ideas and injurious habits, to persuade them to the
adoption of correct principles, to lift them up to superior modes of
living, and so bring forth, as permanent factors in their life, the
qualities of thrift, order, virtue, and manliness.

But who are the agents to bring about this grand change in the Negro
race? Remember, just here, that all effectual revolutions in a people
must be racial in their characteristics. You can't take the essential
qualities of one people and transfuse them into the blood of another
people, and make them indigenous to them. The primal qualities of a
family, a race, a nation are heritable qualities. They abide in their
constitution. They remain, notwithstanding the conditions and the
changes of rudeness, slavery, civilizations, and enlightenment. It is
a law of moral elevation that you must allow the constant abidance of
the essential elements of a people's character; therefore when I put
the query, Who shall be the agent to raise and elevate our race to a
higher plane of being? the answer will at once flash upon your
intelligence. It is to be effected by the scholars and philanthropists
which come forth in these days from the schools. They are the people
to transform, stimulate, and uplift, because it is a work of
intelligence; it is a work which demands historic facts and their
application to new circumstances.

But these reformers must not be mere scholars. The intellect is to be
used, but mainly as the vehicle of mind and spiritual aims, and hence
these men must needs be both scholars and philanthropists.

Allow me, in the conclusion of this article, to express the hope that
He who holds the hearts of all men will give you the spirit to forget
yourselves, and live for the good of man and the glory of God. Such a
field and opportunity are graciously opened to you in the conditions
and needs of our race in this country. May you and I be equal to them!

LAYING THE CORNER STONE.[A]

(FROM THE DAILY AMERICAN.)

Prof. W. H. Council, Principal of the Normal Industrial School, was
the principal speaker of the day. Perhaps few men possess such power
over an audience. The manuscript part