I praised his probable skill in handling juries, and he was mollified. “I am practiced to read men’s faces,” said he. “I pick out the man who is likely to cause trouble and address myself exclusively to him. Judges here are absolutely devoid of color prejudice.” A seeming half-wit had just been sentenced to death at the city of Danville for accosting a white girl. The trial was of the briefest, and the Negro’s transit to the electric chair was made the most rapid possible—so as to avoid a lynching. The lawyer thought that the sentence was harsh—but as long as lynching was so prevalent, legal punishment had to be severe. “Did you ever hear of a white man being convicted for assaulting a Negro?” I asked. “No,” said he, constrainedly, “not unless it were an offense against a child.” He did not think Negroes showed much enterprise in Knoxville—there were no banks, no large businesses, no drug stores, though there were four colored lawyers and sixteen doctors. After Lawyer H—— I visited Mr. D——, a successful colored dentist, with well-groomed head and manicured hands. He was clad in a white hospital coat which was spotless, and by the appurtenances of his cabinet he seemed to be abreast of scientific progress as far as dentistry was concerned. He had a good practice, not only among the Blacks, but with the white country population. He said the old settlers had no prejudice against a colored dentist, though the younger, newer men and women were different. While I was talking a colored girl came in to have Mr. D—— fill a hollow tooth. He said the colored folk had suffered greatly with their teeth in the past, but were taking more care of them now. He loved putting gold crowns on teeth, and most smart Negro young men felt a little gold in the mouth was very _chic_—just the thing. It is certainly a characteristic of the modern Negro. Mr. D—— watched the race riot from his office window, and was much alarmed at the time. But, like Lawyer H——, he felt that there was good feeling in the city. He thought it an accident. The soldiers had been inflamed against the Negroes. In lack of Negro enterprise what a contrast Knoxville was to places like Norfolk, Virginia! I was soon to realize that the further South I went the more stagnant would Negro life show itself—until I reached the point when there would be little scope for investigation. The traveler going South from Washington is let gradually downward into a sort of pit of degradation. Chattanooga is lower than Knoxville, Birmingham lower than Chattanooga, rural Georgia and Alabama lower than all of these. This I think ought to be realized lest the glamour of Negro progress in Virginia and the North give a false impression of the whole.