Christopher H. Payne, who with the possible exception of Mordecai W. Johnson, has been the most intelligent preacher of color to toil in West Virginia, shows in his career how the political world finally absorbed some Negro ministers altogether. He began as a teacher in West Virginia, where by dint of energy he mastered the fundamentals of education. He then became converted and on realizing a call to the ministry, entered the Richmond Institute where he distinguished himself as a promising scholar. After serving the American Baptist Publication Society as a Sunday school missionary and as pastor of churches in Virginia and West Virginia, he became interested in politics in which he participated not only as a speaker but as an editor. He spent some time reading law, secured admission to the bar, and practiced in the local courts. In the course of time, he became more widely known as a figure in politics than as a churchman, although he was at the same time serving as pastor of some church and presiding over Baptist Associations and for years the Baptist State Convention of West Virginia. In 1896, he was elected a member of the West Virginia Legislature, the first Negro to be so honored in that State. He was later appointed a deputy Collector of Internal Revenue under Nathan B. Scott, and in 1903 was appointed Consul to the Virgin Islands, where he served fourteen years. Since the recent purchase of these possessions by the United States he has remained there to practice law. Bishop W. B. Derrick of the African Methodist Episcopal Church also had a political career. From a brief career on the high seas he enlisted in the United States Navy during the Civil War and upon being converted entered the ministry of the African Methodist Church, serving with distinction in the Virginia Conference. Having by the end of the seventies attained this position of influence, he was induced to take an active part in the politics of that State at the time when one of the local parties desired to readjust the State debt. He allied himself with the "Funders," the party in favor of paying the debt as it was contracted, since he believed that his attitude was in harmony with the principles of the National Republican Party. Thinking that his people were about to be made tools in the hands of ambitious and unscrupulous men, Dr. Derrick fearlessly denounced the "Readjusters" as a clique seeking to repudiate the payment of an honest debt. As this contest developed into a vindictive political battle engendering much local strife out of which the "Readjusters" emerged victors, Dr. Derrick, deeming it best to leave Virginia, resigned his charge and spent some time visiting his relatives in the West Indies. He returned to this country to resume his ministry in which he so rapidly developed that he became a popular bishop of his church. [Illustration: BISHOP W. B. DERRICK]