It is a truism to say that the welfare of our country depends on the ideas which are prevalent. No inquiry, then, can be more helpful in determining our condition as a nation than that which relates to the progress of ideas among these classes which give us most anxiety. The Freedmen and the Indians are not the worst classes among us, but they have been the most ignorant, and every patriot is desirous of knowing their present mental condition. A recent visit to the Normal Institute at Hampton, Va., on the occasion of its graduating exercises, gave your correspondent, as he listened to the addresses of the students and conversed with different colored people, an opportunity to collect facts which, though not decisive, are at least suggestive on this point. Undoubtedly, these ideas came largely through the influence of Hampton Institute, but it must be remembered that similar institutions of the American Missionary Association and other boards are scattered throughout the South, and that, through their educated students, these ideas are diffused far and wide among the colored people. As to _work_, the colored man long since learned the Divine law, that if he would not work, neither should he eat. One could not sit for an hour on the wharf at Norfolk, as we did lately, and watch the colored men about the sloops and lighters and on the docks, without being impressed by the fact that they had learned to work. The same lesson is just now being diligently conned by the Indians. Carl Schurz, in his speech at Hampton, declared that the Indians were discovering that they must work or starve, that hunting would no longer support them, and that the land must be cultivated for food. A similar truth was uttered by “Bear’s Heart,” an Indian youth, who made an interesting address in broken English on the same occasion. Said he: “Before I come here, I play; my mother and sisters work. When I go back, my mother and sisters do housework: I dig the ground”—a purpose which was loudly applauded. An amusing story is told of a certain great General who is supposed to sympathize with the barbarous sentiment, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Driving out from Fortress Monroe to examine the progress of the Indians at Hampton, he was inveighing against them, and declaring vehemently that they could not be taught to work, when he cast his eyes on a field belonging to the Institution, and there were ten Indian boys vigorously hoeing corn.