emory, and a good taste for the
elegant--almost grandiloquent--in speech, gorgeous in imagery, and
energetic in narration; their apostrophe and simile were wonderful.
Geography and history furnished great attractions, and they developed
ability to master them. In mathematics they did not do so well, on
account of the lack of training to think consecutively and
methodically. It is a mistake to believe this a mental infirmity of
the race; for a very large number of the students in college at the
present time do as well in mathematics, geometry, trigonometry,
mensuration, and conic sections as the white students of the same
age; and some of them excel in mathematics.

The majority of the Colored students in the Southern schools qualify
themselves to teach and preach; while the remainder go to law and
medicine. Few educated Colored men ever return to agricultural life.
There are two reasons for this: First, reaction. There is an erroneous
idea among some of these young men that labor is dishonorable; that an
educated man should never work with his hands. Second, some of them
believe that a profession gives a man consequence. Such silly ideas
should be abandoned--they must be abandoned! There is a great demand
for educated farmers and laborers. It requires an intelligent man to
conduct a farm successfully, to sell the products of his labor, and to
buy the necessaries of life. No profession can furnish a man with
brains, or provide him a garment of respectability. Every man must
furnish brains and tact to make his calling and election sure in this
world, as well as by faith in the world to come. Unfortunately there
has been but little opportunity for Colored men or boys to get
employment at the trades: but prejudice is gradually giving way to
reason and common-sense; and the day is not distant when the Negro
will have a free field in this country, and will then be responsible
for what he is not that is good. The need of the hour is a varied
employment for the Negro race on this continent. There is more need of
educated mechanics, civil engineers, surveyors, printers, artificers,
inventors, architects, builders, merchants, and bankers than there is
demand for lawyers, physicians, or clergymen. Waiters, barbers,
porters, boot-blacks, hack-drivers, grooms, and private valets find
but little time for the expansion of their intellects. These places
are not dishonorable; but what we say is, _there is room at the top_!
An industria