I have been more than once through the slums and poorer quarters of the coloured people of New Orleans, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New York, and my personal observation convinces me that the coloured population of these cities is in every way many per cent. better off than the corresponding classes in Naples and the other Italian cities I have named. As far as the actual hardships they have to endure or the opportunities open to them, the condition of the Negroes in these cities does not compare, in my opinion, with that of the masses of the Italians in these southern Italian cities. There is this difference also: the majority of the Negroes in the large cities of the South and North in the United States are from the country. They have been accustomed to range and wander in a country where life was loose and simple, and existence hardly a problem. They have not been accustomed to either the comforts or the hardships of complex city life. In the case of the Italians, life in the crowded, narrow streets, and the unsanitary intimacy and confusion in which men, goats, and cattle here mingle, have become the fixed habit of centuries. It is not an unusual thing, for instance, to find a cow or a mule living in close proximity, if not in the same room, with the rest of the family, and, in spite of the skill and artistic taste which show themselves everywhere in the construction and decoration of the buildings, the dirt and disorder in which the people live in these buildings are beyond description. Frequently, in passing through the streets of these southern cities, one meets a herd of goats wandering placidly along over the stone pavements, nibbling here and there in the gutters or holding up in front of a house to be milked. Even where the city government has made the effort to widen and improve the streets, let in air and sunlight, and maintain sanitary conditions, the masses of the people have not yet learned to make use of these conveniences. I recall, in passing along one of these streets, in the centre of the city, which had been recently laid out with broad stone sidewalks and built up with handsome three and four story stone buildings, seeing a man and a cow standing on the sidewalk at the corner of the street. It seemed to me that the natural thing would have been to let the cow stand in the street and not obstruct the sidewalk. But these people evidently look upon the cow as having the same rights as other members of the population. While the man who owned the cow was engaged in milking, a group of women from the neighbouring tenements stood about with their pitchers and gossiped, awaiting their turn at the cow.