They begin to see what we are doing; they begin, in some respects, to feel with us. They even, in some slight measure, are co-operating with us. This is the golden side. It is full of promise. But now if one should see this, and see this only, he would make a great mistake. That which centuries have cherished will not change in a life-time. It is true that it does not require the heroism of the past years for our teachers to go South now, but none of them, so far as we have learned, have been spoiled as yet by being too greatly honored. To illustrate the point of view, we quote from a recent issue of the _Banner-Watchman_ of Athens, Ga. It reads: “About 8 o’clock in the morning of any school day a passer through the streets of Athens is met by great swarms of negro children on their way to be educated. * * * * The question naturally presents itself, who feeds and clothes and buys books for these pupils? We do not suppose that one negro in twenty has $10 worth of property, and they are paid, too, the smallest wages imaginable, barely sufficient to buy them coarse raiment and the plainest food, and yet they all seem not only able to keep their children in idleness (sic) but these children are nicely clad and have expensive books. The question then arises, who pays for all this? And the conundrum naturally arises, what are we educating these young negroes for? What can we do with them? The field for educated whites is narrow enough, and there is no opening for a learned negro, except the pulpit and the school bench, and these two avocations are now crowded to suffocation. Experience has taught that when you educate a negro you incapacitate him for manual labor; and to be a hewer of wood and drawer of water for the superior race is all the sphere that the African ever has or ever will creditably fill. (We forgive this unpremeditated murder of the Queen’s English.) Visit the chain gangs of Georgia, or any old slave State, and you will see that a little education, assisted by a linen duster, a cotton umbrella and a hymn book, is the best recruiting sergeant that the penitentiary has.” “And yet the white people of our State, through the medium of politicians and office-seekers, are taking an enormous load of taxation on their shoulders (sic) to make convicts and vagabonds of the only class of labor they now have. To substantiate this statement we have only to refer to Athens before and since public schools were established, and the history of our city is the history of every place in the South where the whites have consented to bear the burthen of educating the negro. There is (sic) ten times as much stealing in our midst now as before free schools were established, and the number of idlers has increased as many fold. So it is unkindness to the negro to lift him above his position.” In the same paper, a second article declares that the colored schools are rapidly “becoming nuisances.”