"Yes, Madam, I speak the truth. My name is Jones," he said. "I am the editor of the _Reporter_, and Mr. Wyeth used to drop into the office here quite often, and talk with me about the condition of our people in the south. He was a conscientious fellow, void of pretense, and with a regard for anyone's point of view. Yes, Wyeth was a fellow who insisted upon calling a spade a spade, not a hoe; but there is an element of people here--or was, rather--before the appearance of an arraignment by Wyeth, who had only contempt for anyone's opinion other than their own. Oh, I'll tell you, Miss, you cannot imagine how this has been worrying me for years. I have been conducting this paper for some time, and have struggled to make it a good sheet; but, of course, we cannot collect from advertising and make our paper pay, as we would like to see it." He paused a moment, and then, making himself more comfortable, he fell into a long conversation, in which, with much fervor, he told Mildred Latham, whom he had observed was a careful and appreciative listener, of the conditions Sidney Wyeth had seen and had written about. "The papers told about the success of Wilson Jacobs in securing a Y.M.C.A. for the town northwest of here, and God knows how glad I am to see that our people in the south are coming to appreciate a Christian forward movement. We have been, in a way, steering in a direction that got us nowhere, and that was the way Wyeth used to discuss it. We have here, and in the town just mentioned, the worst Negroes under the sun, and yet counted as civilized people. And it seems to have been forgotten or overlooked, that our salvation, in a moral sense, as well as in a practical and progressive, depends first upon our own initiative. I cannot account for the selfishness that has so pervaded the lives of our professional people. Last summer, in a lengthy article, a Mr. B.J. Dickson, editor of the _Attalia Independent_, scored the physicians of that city for a little incident, that in itself showed a mark of narrowness that few would or could be brought to believe." He then related the article in brief, stating that the color line had been drawn among the colored people themselves, and became very much worked up over the fact that most of the people who had been invited, did not, as a rule, employ Negro doctors for professional purposes. "I have hinted at the things Mr. Wyeth attacked in his article, and I have, more than once, pointed to the evils in our own society; but no one paid any attention. No, they were too self-opinionated. They could not see their faults in a Negro paper; but, when it was brought to their attention on the front page of one of the most conservative papers conducted by whites in the south, well, then, it appeared altogether different.