possessing the humorous character which it has lately revealed. In
late issues of February it has, in the garb of gravity, about two
columns that are ridiculously funny.

It appears that Prof. Sumner Salter, a graduate of Amherst College, a
son of an honored pastor of Iowa, a musical director of exceptional
gifts and a teacher of eminent ability, was solicited by parties in
Atlanta to take his residence there in the interest of the musical
cultivation of such as could secure his services. He soon attracted
the patronage of society, and all went smoothly until the tempter
came. Alas, there was a serpent in Eden, so there was a skeleton in
the closet of the _Atlanta Constitution_. It was a dreadful skeleton.
The _Constitution_ seriously publishes the fact that "it was whispered
about for some time," until patience ceased to be a virtue, when it
sent a guardian of public safety in the form of a reporter to
investigate. "Was it really true that a white man who was giving music
lessons to white people was also teaching a colored class at another
time and place? If so, what about the New South? The black man had no
business to be black, but he _was_ all the same, and being so what right
had Prof. Salter to teach _colored_ people to sing? Let the matter be
thoroughly searched out. The reporter departed on his mission, with a
countenance more in sorrow than in anger, and returned _vice versa_.

"'Tis true, 'tis pity,
And pity 'tis 'tis true."

The professor was actually doing this very absurd thing. He had taken
charge of a colored class in the church of which Rev. Evarts Kent is
minister and was teaching them how rightly to use the talents with
which God had so richly endowed them.