best and not by his worst. Of course, the best is always in the minority, but that is the way we are judged. If these same men were to go into the South and go into the negroes’ homes, they would find there very often excellent comfort. Some one has asked whether the negro has any of this race prejudice in him. No; he will give you the best bed and the fattest pig and the best chicken he has got in the yard. There is no prejudice there. And then, not only these things, but you find in many of their houses instruments of music—some with an organ, some with a piano; and you can find young girls there who can play on both, and if you want a little singing they can do that too. Negroes can sing as well as my friends the Chinamen. These things, too, are not only found in the cities but in the country places and villages. The negro has done all this, notwithstanding that he has lost millions—yes, the negro has been defrauded of millions, yet he has accumulated millions, and in many instances he has become the owner of the farms and plantations of his former master. It was no longer than two or three years ago that the papers told us that the farm of Mr. Jefferson Davis rightly belonged not to him, but to two negroes, they having paid $200,000 for it. And these are but examples. You go through the South and you find negroes owning farms of 100 or 200 acres each; and I know of one man who owns 900 acres, all of which he has bought since the war. We have gone forth to the earth, and with the horny hands of toil we have made the earth to answer to our appeals; and these have been the results. Why, in Georgia alone there are more than 85,000 colored voters who own 500,000 acres of land valued at about $1,244,000, besides city property valued at $2,100,000, horses and mules, etc., valued at, $2,000,000, making an aggregate for Georgia alone of more than $6,000,000, which the colored people in that State now own. But why should I enumerate? In fact, the negro has made the waste places of the South to blossom as the rose. He has built its railroads, dug its canals, erected its mansions, makes its carriages and buggies, and in 1878 produced for the American people more than $250,000,000. In the face of these evidences, who would dare question his industry, stigmatize him as “lazy,” and ridicule his unskilled labor? But these are but the beginnings—the gray streaks of dawn ushering in a brighter day for this toiling and long-oppressed son of Ham. We are often reminded of what the negro was in ancient days, especially in Northern Africa; but to-day we are forced to see what he is in America, notwithstanding its prejudices and its political oppression and persecution; we are forced to look at him rising in his incomparable glory, the anomaly of the race and the wonder of mankind.