You will pardon a single illustration of their capacity for enlightened politics. For nearly eight years I have had in my employment a colored man, Daniel Martin by name. He is about my own age. I trust him fully in all matters for which he has capacity. We are much attached to each other, and, the truth is, we have been taking care of each other for a good while. He gets better wages than ordinary colored men in our community, and is much above the average of his race in character and common sense. He can read “coarse print,” and can sign his name imperfectly. You will miss the point of my illustration unless you bear in mind that he had steadily voted the Republican ticket from the beginning of his citizenship to the date of my story. And he so votes till this day. The day before the Hayes and Tilden election he was plowing in a little field near my house. One of our students quizzed him about his views and intentions: “How are you going to vote to-morrow, Uncle Daniel?” It is a peculiarity of the Southern negro that he never delivers a solemn judgment on any subject without coming to a full halt in whatever engages him. One consequence is, he comes to a great many halts in his work. Another peculiarity of at least the Southern negro is, that he thinks in metaphor and speaks in parables. So Daniel, stopping his horse and sticking his plow deeper into the ground, delivered himself as follows: “Now, Mr. Longstreet, you see I is plowin dis furrow. If I only plow dis furrow I makes dis furrow too deep and I don’t plow de balance of de patch.” Mr. Longstreet admitted the force of the statement. Daniel continued in answer to the young man’s question: “I think things is ben gwine on in one way long enough; I think dere ought to be a change. Wherefore I is gwine to vote for Mr. Hayes to-morrow—git up, Bill.” Next day he and I went to our county town; he voted for Hayes that there might be a change; I voted for Tilden that there might be a change; he killed my vote—or possibly one of yours—and we were “equal before the law.”