misrepresent them. But what matters it? Conscious in the strength that they are doing right, they will work on unhindered and undisturbed. Christian virtue finds in its own development all the reward necessary to stimulate continuance in well doing.

THE COLORED PEOPLE AT THE NEW ORLEANS EXPOSITION.

The colored people of the United States are just twenty years out of the house of bondage. With long centuries of barbarism and two hundred and fifty years of slavery behind them, they started out homeless, landless, moneyless and experienceless. The New Orleans Exposition was to have exhibits from all lands: Asia, with its millennium of transmitted achievements; Europe, with its centuries of enlightened development; the United States, with their wonderful improvements on the best the world had produced, were all to be there. What show could the twenty-year-old freedmen make in such company? The very idea of their attempting to put in an appearance would seem absurd.

But the colored people desired at least to stand up and be counted. They determined to be there. The entire gallery in one end of the immense Government building was assigned them, and the specimens of their skill more than filled it. They came from nearly every State and Territory in the Union. Their exhibits represented almost every department of mechanical, agricultural and artistic skill. Excellence in workmanship, fertility in invention, tastefulness in the fine arts, were all displayed to a remarkable degree in the large collection. Southerners and Northerners were alike astonished at what their eyes beheld. Those who thought that the negro has no higher mission than to be a "hewer of wood and drawer of water," were compelled either to change their minds or else to say they did not believe that the colored people did the work. It was amusing to hear the remarks of some of the latter class, as they looked at some beautiful specimens of negro handicraft or ingenuity.

It may interest the readers of the Missionary to glance at the great variety of lines along which negro ability put itself on exhibition.

Examination papers from schools were very numerous, showing proficiency in penmanship, spelling, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, free drawing, grammar and translations from the classics; fine needlework of all kinds; millinery; dress-making, tailoring; portrait and landscape painting in oil, water-colors and crayon; photography; sculpture; models of steamboats, locomotives, stationary engines, and railway cars; cotton presses, plows, cultivators, and reaping machines; wagons, buggies; tools of almost all kinds, from the hammer of the carpenter to the finely-wrought forceps of the dentist; piano and organ (both pipe and reed) making; carpentry, cabinet-making; upholstery; tin-smithing; black-smithing, boot and shoe making; basket and broom making; pottery, plain and glazed; brick-making; agricultural products, including all the cereals and fruits raised in the country; silk-worm culture; fruit preserving; flour from a mill, and machinery from a foundry owned by a colored man; patented inventions and improvements, nearly all of them useful and practical, were quite numerous; drugs and medicines; stationery, printing and publishing.

Some of the articles on exhibition are worthy of special mention—a black walnut pulpit, in design and finish as beautiful and tasteful as any church might wish; a sofa finely upholstered, and the covering embroidered with artistically-executed needlework, showing four prominent events in the life of Toussaint l'Ouverture; a chandelier, very beautiful in design and finely finished; a complete set of dentist's instruments, in polish and finish remarkable; a little engine, made by a silversmith of Knoxville, who was a slave, and who has become a skilled workman of local reputation. He never worked in a shop till he had one of his own. He learned the use of tools without any instruction. These articles would certainly merit attention, even if put in competition with similar specimens of the very best workmanship.

Neither the negroes nor their friends have any reason to regret that an exhibit was made. It was in every sense of the word creditable. It marks a progress simply wonderful, when all the circumstances are taken into the account. It is prophetic of a very hopeful future. It demonstrates that the negro race can enter every profession and calling in which the white man is found. It proclaims in tones that no one should misunderstand, that he who writes or speaks of the colored people should be careful how he pronounces judgment in regard to their capacity. They should be given a white man's chance. No trade nor occupation should be closed against them. Open doors should welcome to honorable competition, white and black alike. Let this be so, and in less than half a century there will not be a trade, nor profession, nor calling, in which black men will not be found in the front. There will be preachers and professors, and editors, and physicians, and lawyers, and statesmen, and teachers, and bankers, and business men, and artisans, and mechanics and farmers, of African descent, of whom, as brethren, the very greatest of white men will not need to be ashamed. Let writers on the negro stop theorizing about his capacity for this or that calling, and unite in demanding that he have a fair chance to become what God has made him capable of becoming. It is wrong, it is wicked for men who by voice and pen influence public sentiment, to conclude that because the negro is now a waiter, a boot-black, a barber, a laborer, that therefore he cannot be anything else, or even that he cannot probably be anything else. By the very force of circumstances he has been compelled to occupy these positions. By an unjust public sentiment he has been shut out from even an opportunity to prove his capacity to stand beside his white brother in every calling.

Public sentiment should be reformed at this point; and the colored people's exhibition of what they have achieved in the short space of twenty years, in spite of opposition, and in spite of lack of opportunity, assures us that if they are permitted they will contribute no small share in securing the reformation. We advise all leaders of public sentiment who do not desire twenty-five or thirty years hence to be found eating their words of to-day, or explaining how it was that they came to be on ground so untenable, to heed the lessons of this Exposition, and range themselves with those who look at facts, and who recognize the prophetic power of facts, and heartily accept the prophecy, even if this prophecy run counter to what have been their fancies.

The Colored People's Educational Day at the World's Exposition called out an immense crowd and proved to be of very great interest. Speeches were made by representatives of both races. Rev. Dr. Palmer, the eloquent Presbyterian divine, of New Orleans, and Col. Wm. Preston Johnson, President of the Tulane University, represented the Louisiana whites, and in their speeches not only complimented the colored people on the progress they had made, but assured them of the hearty sympathy and co-operation of all good people in the South. The Rev. A. E. P. Albert, a graduate of our Straight University, represented the colored people. The newspapers published his speech in full. We have read it with much interest. It is a speech of considerable power. It is an honor to the man, to his race and to the A. M. A.

Our Student's Letter this month is from Talladega College. The memories it portrays are not pleasant, but it is fitting to remember the pit out of which we have been digged. The darkness of the picture makes the present opportunities and privileges of the colored people to shine out all the brighter. Heartily can we thank God that these terrible things are now only