ailure of higher education for
the race. It is to our credit that comparatively few, who have struggled
through the long years that lead to culture and scholarship, can be
found to give enemies of the race an opportunity for assault from that
quarter. Figures will not lie, though they sometimes may stagger one;
and statistics show us that the college-bred Negro is far from giving a
record for uselessness.

I have said that the educated Negro (and I include both sexes) leads by
the inspiration that is radiated. Much as we regret it we cannot refuse
to face the fact that grows upon us daily--the fact that there are too
many Negro youths to-day, who seem lacking in ambition, in aspiration,
in either fixedness or firmness of purpose. We have too many dudes whose
ideal does not rise above the possession of a new suit, a cane, a silk
hat, patent leather shoes, a cigarette and a good time--too many in
every sense the "sport of the gods." It is the mission of the educated
Negro to help change this--to see that thoughtlessness gives place to
seriousness. Ruskin spoke a basic truth when he said that youth is no
time for thoughtlessness; and it is especially applicable to the youth
of a race that has its future to make. The Negro who stands on the
higher rounds of the ladder of education is pre-eminently fitted for
this work of inspiration--helping to mold and refine, "working out the
beast" and seeing that the "ape and tiger die," rescuing from vice and
all that the term implies.

He will help to form classes of society where culture and refinement,
high thinking and high living, in its proper sense, draw the
line--classes made up of what one denominates an "aristocracy of
intelligence and character that protects the masses from their foes
without and from their own folly and unrighteousness."

This same influence is to be exercised over those young men and women
fresh from college who have two things to learn--that the knowledge they
possess is neither altogether new, nor is it patented by them, and
further, that one great danger lies ever before those of any race who
have won great distinction in college halls--that of total extinction
out in the world.

Nothing but true scholarship can lead these young people to take proper
measure of self and estimate the things about them at their true value
as they stand at that precarious place, the beginning of a career. There
they need the warning of Omar emphasized to "waste not the