Imagine ten millions of any other race in the United States with perfect freedom of action! We might well shudder at what would happen us—happen the country. We do not feel that way about the posterity of the operators and passengers of the old Underground Railroad. They are peaceable, earnest students of the ways of civilization, and they are working upward—they are ambitious to learn and constantly devise methods of improving their condition in the same way all true American citizens are following. They have their homes, their children, and their attachments in our midst, in fact, they belong to our soil, and have no desire to depart elsewhere to spend their money. They are always ready to shed their blood for the Stars and Stripes, and are always willing to leap to the nation’s rescue, or to aid in promoting its welfare. Where does the Colored race learn all these things? Not in the schools for they are limited, and live too much in the musty past, but the cap-sheaf of the education of the race, its maintenance as a factor in the civilization of the earth, is in their contact with the world, their absorption of the wisdom and experience of the world’s people, due in a great measure to the operators of the Overground Railroad. Through this source the great race is learning that there is no vocation to which it may not aspire in time to come and the opportunities for intellectual development and its benefits are multiplying rapidly. Already there is a great sprinkling of dark skins in every avenue of life, commerce, trade, science, and in everything that the white skin aspires to. Look down for a moment, and compare your state with that of the scavenger, the sewer digger, the section hand, and the grades of labor so attractive to foreign elements that come here to scrape up enough to return to their wallow in their various native lands. You are far above these and you belong here and you are rising with the best. The Story of a Rising Race Told in Pictures [Illustration] _PHOTOGRAPHED FROM LIFE_ │MANUAL TRAINING Special Collection C │HOME SCIENCE │HOSPITAL PRACTICE │DENTAL SURGERY [Illustration: PROFESSION OF DENTAL SURGERY Students practicing in the Dental Infirmary, prior to taking their degree. Howard University, Washington, D. C. ] [Illustration: ACCURACY OF MIND AND HAND Drafting Class of young men receiving a course in mechanical drawing, qualifying them for making working plans of machinery, vehicles, buildings, etc. Hampton Institute. ] [Illustration: INDUSTRIAL TRAINING FOR WOMEN Developing talent and taste in the art of millinery, an industry for women. A class at Spellman’s Seminary, Atlanta, Ga. ] [Illustration: UNIVERSITY GIRLS A class of ornamental workers at Wiley University, Texas. ] [Illustration: