And the contrast suggested is one that it would be well for those who are impatient of the negroes’ slow progress to follow out to the minutest detail. He writes: “It is impossible for a visitor from the North not to compare their position as a race with that of our ancestors two hundred years ago, when starting an American civilization. The Southern negroes have probably as much comfort about them as most of our early forefathers, as good houses, as good furniture, as many cattle: but they have not the intelligent educated upper class, which founded our great colleges and which molded our whole population. This influence they must get from abroad. They need it, and they appreciate and want it; and no more needed and fruitful work can be done by our benevolent people than to provide the Southern negroes with Christian education.” * * * * * The _Memphis Avalanche_ says that a most interesting and entertaining feature of the evening exercises, connected with the close of the Le Moyne School, was the address to the graduating class by Judge J. O. Pierce, which was scholarly, thoughtful and eloquent. And it adds of the school that “it is an honor to the educational institutions of Memphis. It has done much to forward the cause of education among the colored population, and the good results of its labors are apparent in every direction. Institutions of this class cannot be too much encouraged.” It is proof that we have entered upon a new era when the principal of one of our schools is constrained to say, what Prof. Steele, of Le Moyne Institute, does in a card to the editors of the _Memphis Appeal_: “I cannot leave the city for the summer without first thanking you, and, through the _Appeal_, also the other eminent gentlemen, who have, during the year past, given us so much aid and encouragement in our work among the colored people of this city and vicinity. The course of lectures which these gentlemen have provided has, I am certain, accomplished much good in many ways. * * * In this, as in every other respect, a better day is near at hand. * * * It has been our aim, in quietly doing our work here, to hasten forward this day of better feeling, and after years of patient toil, and amid many discouragements, we hope that at last a day is not far distant when our work shall gain the approval and aid of all good people, or even when we may relinquish our efforts and hand over our work to those here who should be, and who are, I am convinced, becoming greatly interested in it. Again, in behalf of the faculty and students of this school, and in behalf of the American Missionary Association, which has, in the past sixteen years, expended millions of dollars in education at the South, I thank the _Appeal_ and other papers and gentlemen for their interest and encouragement in our work.” * * * * * OUR GREAT NEED.