now clamor for what they never can acquire. The young and ambitious are pressing forward, and they are doing it with eyes wide open to the difficulties that must be encountered, while at the same time, to give them confidence and hope, they have before them the living examples of scholarly achievement on the part of some of the youth of their race. These young men and young women, who are now turned away from the doors of our schools because “there is no room,” appeal to us not merely because they want to obtain an education for themselves, but because they represent the neglected condition of a race. It is a remarkable fact, and most pathetic in its meaning, that they plead in many instances to be taken into school in order that they may qualify themselves to be the means of the elevation of their people. A critical time is this. These millions cannot be left much longer in their ignorance without danger to the public peace. Vice does not tend to produce virtue. Ignorance does not tend to produce knowledge. Let the feeling settle down on the colored youth that all avenues for intellectual culture are closed against them, and ambition for improvement will soon disappear, and when the brood of evils to which ignorance is the prolific parent has been once fairly let loose upon the land, it may be too late to remedy the mischief. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” says the wisdom of the ages. The demand of the hour is, “Let the wisdom of the ages be put to practical use.” Recorded in books, tossed from lip to lip, it profits little; it must be put into action. No question presses upon the Christian and patriotic thought of our land with greater urgency, or bears within it farther reaching consequences, than this same question of the education of our negro population. The hour of opportunity is now. We ask the friends of the Freedmen to heed this second call that comes to them, to prosecute the work of Christian education among the negroes, with a greater zeal and greater enthusiasm than ever before. If we are faithful, a rich harvest will be ours to reap. * * * * * THE NEGRO FOR HIS PLACE. PROF. C. C. PAINTER. An intelligent Christian woman, fairly representative, we believe, of the best friends of the negro, herself engaged in the work of negro education as an amateur, in the literal meaning of the word, during her annual sojourn in the South, said to us recently that she did not believe in the attempt of Fisk, Howard, Atlanta and like schools to give this people a higher education. They should be taught the three R’s, and how to work, and so fitted for their place in life. She esteemed it an unfortunate mistake and blunder that they should be disqualified for it by a classical education.