gressman Barnes. Queer logic is it not? The latter
should say so, for it is he who claims that "the Anglo-Saxon is the
only member of the human family who has yet shown evidence of a
capacity for self-government."

Again, it is said that the negro cannot attain high and rigid
scholarship, and even those who have succeeded in becoming educated
"if left to themselves would relapse into barbarism." Now, I cannot
believe that any such statement as this can be made with sincerity. In
the light of the facts it is preposterous. Flipper, while at West
Point, demonstrated beyond controversy the fallacy of such a position
as the first; and there is hardly a college commencement in which some
negro in some way does not continue to show its falsity by
distinguishing himself by his extraordinary attainments. Even while I
write, a letter lies before me from a young colored student, a
graduate of Brown University, who is now taking a post-graduate course
at the American School for Classical Studies, at Athens, Greece. From
all reports, he is making an excellent record, and will present a
thesis in March on "The Demes of Athens." As to relapsing into
barbarism, were the negro removed from white influence, the mere
mention of the negro scholar, Dr. Edward Blyden, born on the island of
St. Thomas, educated and reared in Africa away from the slightest
social contact with people of Anglo-Saxon extraction, is sufficient
proof that such a conclusion is not a correct one.

What a leading journal has said in regard to the Indians may be
repeated here as applicable to the negro: "The most crying need in
Indian [negro] affairs is its disentanglement from politics and
political manipulations."

Here is an opportunity for the Church, but the Church has shown itself
wholly inadequate to meet the case, and because of its tendency to
shirk its duty, may be said to be to blame for many of the troubles
growing out of the presence of the negro on this continent. I have
noted that there is more prejudice in the Church, as a rule, than
there is in the State. If, as is asserted by some, neither Church nor
State can settle this question, then there is nothing to be done but
to leave it to time and the combined patience and forbearance of the
American people,--black as well as white.

A PRAIRIE HEROINE.

BY HAMLIN GARLAND.

Lucretia Burns had never been handsome, even in her days of early
girlhood, and now she was middle aged, distorted with