s person, who spends
his life in thinking that everybody wants to tread on his corns.

"When two Frenchmen meet in a foreign land," goes an old saying, "there
is one too many."

[Illustration: THE TWO FRENCHMEN.]

In Chicago there are two Frenchmen engaged in teaching the natives of
the city "how to speak and write the French language correctly." The
people of Chicago maintain that the streets are too narrow to let these
two Frenchmen pass, when they walk in opposite directions. And it
appears that one of them has lately started a little French paper--to
abuse the other in.

I think that all the faults and weaknesses of the French can be
accounted for by the presence of a defect, jealousy; and the absence of
a quality, humor.

* * * * *

_Oberlin, O., March 24._

Have to-night given a lecture to the students of Oberlin College, a
religious institution founded by the late Rev. Charles Finney, the
friend of the slaves, and whose voice, they say, when he preached, shook
the earth.

The college is open to colored students; but in an audience of about a
thousand young men and women, I could only discover the presence of two
descendants of Ham.

Originally many colored students attended at Oberlin College, but the
number steadily decreased every year, and to-day there are only very
few. The colored student is not officially "boycotted," but he has
probably discovered by this time that he is not wanted in Oberlin
College any more than in the orchestra stalls of an American theater.

The Declaration of Independence proclaims that "all men are created
equal," but I never met a man in America (much less still a woman) who
believed this or who acted upon it.

The railroad companies have special cars for colored people, and the
saloons special bars. At Detroit, I was told yesterday that a
respectable and wealthy mulatto resident, who had been refused service
in one of the leading restaurants of the town, brought an action against
the proprietor, but that, although there was no dispute of the facts,
the jury unanimously decided against the plaintiff, who was moreover
mulcted in costs to a heavy amount. But all this is nothing: the Young
Men's Christian Association, one of the most representative and
influential corporations in the United States, refuses to admit colored
youths to membership.

[Illustration: THE NEGRO.]

It is just possible that in a few years colored students wil