Not long ago a negro preacher whose self-appreciation was as great as that of Doctor Washington went out to Liberia to subdue the heathen, in the home of the negro race. The heathen were not subdued, but the preacher was. He threw off his store clothes, gave a whoop, gathered up an armful of wives and broke for the woods; the “Call of the Wild” was too much for his newly soldered civilization. Now, I don’t mean to say that Doctor Washington would relapse, under similar circumstances; but when I hear him call his new race _Afro-Americans_ and listen while he soberly tells them that _they are superior to the whites_, I beg that he will remember his kin across the sea, his brethren in Santo Domingo, the decadents of Liberia, and the tens of thousands of his race here in this country who devoutly believe in witch doctors, in ghosts, in the conjure bag, and in the power of one negro to undo another by the mysterious but invincible “Trick.” Remember this, Doctor, education is a good thing, but _it never did, and never will, alter the essential character of a man or a race_. Of course, Doctor, if you think your race the equal of ours, you have the right to say it. It’s a free country, you know. But, really, you ought not to “crowd the monkey” by putting in a claim for superiority. _Such a claim does your race no good._ It _may_ do them harm. It may cultivate a spirit of truculent self-assertion which even your warmest admirers, North and South, might find it hard to tolerate. In the “History of Civilization,” Buckle says: “Above all this, there is a far higher movement; and as the tide rolls on, now advancing, now receding, there is, amid its endless fluctuations, one thing, and one alone, which endures forever. The actions of bad men produce only temporary evil, the actions of good men only temporary good; and eventually the good and the evil altogether subside, are neutralized by subsequent generations, absorbed by the incessant movement of future ages. But the discoveries of great men never leave us; they are immortal, they contain those eternal truths which survive the shock of empires, outlive the struggle of rival creeds and witness the decay of successive religions. All _these_ have their different measures and their different standards; one set of opinions for one age, another set for another. _They_ pass away like a dream; they are as a fabric of a vision, which leaves not a rack behind. _The discoveries of genius alone remain_: it is to _them_ we owe all that we now have, _they_ are for all ages and for all times; never young, and never old, _they_ bear the seeds of their own life, they flow on in a perennial and undying stream; _they_ are essentially cumulative, and giving birth to the additions which they subsequently receive, _they thus influence the most distant posterity, and after the lapse of centuries produce more effect than they were able to do even at the moment of their promulgation._” Noble lines!