On the other hand, a good proportion of the race seek to improve their opportunities in schools and colleges, provided partly by the aid of Northern friends, but principally from taxes paid by their former owners in spite of the impoverished condition of the South. Many have acquired independent homes, with the laudable purpose of becoming useful and respected citizens. The majority, however, are best pleased with itineracy. It is needless to say that those of the latter class can never become desirable domestics in a well-ordered, cleanly house. And those whose youth has been passed in schoolrooms, with no training in the habits of refined life, have not acquired sufficient education to avail much in the line of letters. Thus the problem of their race remains unsolved, even by those who know it most intimately. In the matter of classical education the question occurs: Will the literature of the one race meet the requirements of the other, or the heroes and heroines of one be acceptable to the other? Has not God given each country its distinct race and literature? The history of every country occupied by antagonistic races has been that the stronger has dominated or exterminated the other. Thinking of the superficial education at some of our schools, I am reminded of a colored boy's subject for a composition. Not long since a "colored scholar," seventeen years old, with very fair intelligence, who had never missed a day at the public school, was asked by a white gentleman who was much interested in the boy, and who often took the trouble to explain to him words in common use, the meaning of which the boy was wholly ignorant,-- "Peter, what lessons have you to-night?" "Well, sir, I got a composition to write to-night." "A composition? What's your subject?" "Dey tell me, sir, to write a composition on de administration o' Mr. Pierce." "Administration of Mr. Pierce!" exclaimed the gentleman, himself an eminent journalist and statesman. "And what could you know about the administration of Mr. Pierce? Did you ever hear of Mr. Pierce?" "No, sir, I nuvver has." The tie which once bound the two races together is broken forever, and entire separation in churches and schools prevents mutual interest or intercourse. Our church schools are doing much to elevate and improve the negroes, and we have to thank many kind, warm friends in the North for timely aid in missionary boxes, books, and Bibles to carry on the colored Sunday-school work in which many Southern people are deeply interested, without the means of conducting them as they wish.