y
newspaper of any consequence reproduced the oration in full. It was
published and commented upon by the leading journals of England. The
President of the United States wrote a letter of congratulation to
Belton. Everywhere the piece was hailed as a classic.

After reading the oration, Mr. V.M. King, editor of _The Temps_,
decided to take it home with him and read it to his wife. She met him
at the door and as he kissed her she noticed that there was a sober
look in his eye. Tenderly he brushed back a few stray locks of his
wife's hair, saying as he did so, in a somewhat troubled tone: "Wife,
it has come at last. May the good Lord cease not to watch over our
beloved but erring land." She inquired as to what he meant. He led her
to his study and read to her Belton's oration.

In order to understand the words which we have just quoted as being
spoken by him to his wife, let us, while he reads, become a little
better acquainted with Mr. King and his paper, _The Temps_.

Mr. King was born and reared in Virginia, was educated at a Northern
University, and had sojourned for several years in England. He was a
man of the broadest culture. For several years he had given the negro
problem most profound study. His views on the subject were regarded
by the white people of the South as ultra-liberal. These views he
exploited through his paper, _The Temps_, with a boldness and vigor,
gaining thereby great notoriety.

Though a democrat in politics, he was most bitterly opposed to the
practice, almost universal in the South, of cheating the negro out
of his right to vote. He preached that it was unjust to the negro and
fatal to the morals of the whites.

On every possible occasion he viciously assaulted the practice of
lynching, denouncing it in most scathing terms. In short, he was an
outspoken advocate of giving the negro every right accorded him by the
Constitution of the United States.

He saw the South leading the young negro boy and girl to school,
where, at the expense of the state, they were taught to read history
and learn what real liberty was, and the glorious struggles through
which the human race had come in order to possess it. He foresaw that
the rising, educated negro would allow his eye to linger long on
this bloody but glorious page until that most contagious of diseases,
devotion to liberty, infected his soul.

He reasoned that the negro who had endured the hardships of slavery
might spend his time looking