best commentary on racial life, its hopes and
fears.

RACE EVILS.

BY REV. G. W. JOHNSON, AUGUSTA, GA.

One trouble with us as a race is that we are not enough interested in
our progress, not enough interested in our standing among other races.
We are too easily satisfied, and not very anxious to get far away from
the fleshpots of Egypt. Every race must have its leaders, defenders,
and champions. If they have them not, they must produce them.

We should begin with childhood. Every criminal was once an innocent
child, and when he first commenced to do wrong, he found it hard and
difficult. Conscience called, alarmed, and remonstrated; and even
after wrongs were committed, conscience, the interior judge, held
court on the inside. He arraigned the prisoner at the bar of reason
for trial; but he continues to do wrong, and in early manhood he
stands a criminal. Step by step he was led away.

Take the murderer. He occupies his cell hardened by crime. Sentence
has been passed; the day of execution comes. The sheriff enters the
prison, reads the death warrant, pinions his hands, and the slow and
steady death march begins. The scaffold is reached, steps ascended,
and the prisoner takes his place on the center of the death trap; the
black cap is securely tied over his face, and the rope around his
neck, and as the trapdoor is sprung, the unfortunate man leaps into
darkness. This criminal was once the idol of a mother's heart, who
bowed over his cradle, taught him to walk and to say his prayers. She
looked forward to the time when he would grow up to manhood and make
himself felt among the world's great men; but alas! those hopes are
blighted. The boy begins the downward way keeping bad company, and
staying out late at night. He associates with gamblers and drunkards,
and soon becomes both. He goes to jail, to the chain gang, to the
penitentiary, and finally to the gallows. Much of the dishonesty is
due to the negligence of parents in early training.

I want to call your attention to that craze for fine dressing. If
parents would teach their daughters that a beautiful character is the
best and greatest ornament, and that a pure heart beneath the most
common costume is to be prized above silk and satin at the price of
virtue, we would have a better and purer race.

We have many enemies of the race who are members of the race. I will
call your attention to them by classes.

We have a class of women who boast of the