moral as
by the artistic and pictorial elements in religion. Every member of the
race is an incipient poet, and all are enthralled by music and oratory.

Illustrations are abundant. We might refer to the oratory of Douglass,
to the poetry of Dunbar, to the picturesque style of DuBois, to the
mysticism of the paintings of Tanner, to the tragic sculpture of Meta
Warrick Fuller, and to a long line of singers and musicians. Even
Booker Washington, most practical of Americans, proves the point, the
distinguishing qualities of his speeches being anecdote and vivid
illustration. It is best, however, to consider members of the race who
were entirely untaught in the schools. On one occasion Harriet Tubman,
famous for her work in the Underground Railroad, was addressing an
audience and describing a great battle in the Civil War. "And then,"
said she, "we saw the lightning, and that was the guns; and then we
heard the thunder, and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain
falling, and that was drops of blood falling; and when we came to git in
the craps, it was dead men that we reaped." Two decades after the war
John Jasper, of Richmond, Virginia, astonished the most intelligent
hearers by the power of his imagery. He preached not only that the "sun
do move," but also of "dry bones in the valley," the glories of the New
Jerusalem, and on many similar subjects that have been used by other
preachers, sometimes with hardly less effect, throughout the South. In
his own way Jasper was an artist. He was eminently imaginative; and it
is with this imaginative--this artistic--quality that America has yet to
reckon.

The importance of the influence has begun to be recognized, and on the
principle that to him that hath shall be given, in increasing measure
the Negro is being blamed for the ills of American life, a ready excuse
being found in the perversion and debasement of Negro music. We have
seen discussions whose reasoning, condensed, was somewhat as follows:
The Negro element is daily becoming more potent in American society;
American society is daily becoming more immoral; therefore at the door
of the Negro may be laid the increase in divorce and all the other
evils of society. The most serious charge brought against the Negro
intellectually is that he has not yet developed the great creative or
organizing mind that points the way of civilization. He most certainly
has not, and in this he is not very unlike all the other peop